¿¿ IS ABORTION  “ALWAYS IMMORAL” ??

Justicia. Baden-Würtemberg. Wikimedia Commons (fair use)

Healthcare is complicated, and costly.  We don’t need another busybody telling us what is right or wrong about settled law.  Life will become more costly yet, if the current nominee is confirmed.  While I find abortion repugnant, I won’t tell you how to manage your body, within reason. But the current supreme court nominee seems inclined and happy to do so.  

Mrs Barrett apparently has already decided the question posed by my blogpost, for you.  (In  a law journal article she has cited a teaching from her church that calls all abortion immoral. ~see paragraph 5.)

So let’s conduct a thought experiment in which the above-named woman, in her youth, was raped and impregnated by a pedophile priest.  Now, we can’t know what she would have decided under such circumstances. (But I trust we can agree that the priest was immoral.)  If she were your daughter, what would your preference have been? … Would you want to retain an open window for allowing your family’s  consideration (and prayer) to protect this choice?  

He who said  Judge not, lest ye be judged (Matt 7)  arguably has not lost any of his well-deserved eternal rest over the question of abortion.  Let us recall that he also said that not even a sparrow falls to the ground, but that the Father knows (Matt 10).  Yes, and he also agrees that Thou shalt not kill. And yet he instructs Peter on minding his own business.  (John 21:21).  It is noteworthy that he did not say Don’t allow your neighbor to kill.  Case closed.  Court is adjourned.

There’s more to be wasted than lives and dollars with this nomination. Liberty and justice are at stake.  Does America still value separation of church and state, codified as first  among our Bill of Rights?

¿¿ WHAT’s THAT BAD SMELL ?? . . . .

 

When the Cosmic Mind speaks, pay attention.  That now Famous Fly stayed there for two minutes while Pence was saying that there was no such thing as institutional racism. (see comment section.)  Get the message — like stink on shugga !!!    Mr Pence, this is no personal condemnation of you, Sir, but of the administration’s policies and practices and viewpoints. 

Now, I ask you, dear Reader, was that fly sent by the Chinese Army?  Was it a socialist? – a communist? – a liberal?  Perhaps it was a divinely-sent Apostle Fly – an Angel Fly sent to deliver a message.  Will we heed the Messenger?  (Personally, I think America is paying close attention, and is well-able to read between the lines.)  

WEATHER TOOLS : : HURRICANE WATCH

I love these animated weather tools!  (Click the orange links to see current imagery.)   On Tuesday, October 6, we learned that Tropical Storm Delta, in the Caribbean Sea, had suddenly blown up into a category four hurricane in record time.  It came ashore near Puerto Morelos about 5:30 pm, local time as either a Cat 3 or Cat 2 storm (reports vary) , where a screenshot of landfall is visible below.  At the orange links there are pulldown menus, and many choices for viewing. You might want to bookmark the sites.  (Note: the remnant of TS Gamma is in the Gulf to the west of Yucatán, in the graphic above.)  

Here in Mérida, measured at our house, we’ve had nearly ten inches of rain between Friday and late Wednesday.  Wind has not yet been a factor, but had been forecast not to exceed 30mph this far inland (about forty-minute drive from the coast).  I doubt it exceeded 10 mph.  And the storm did not follow the predicted track, but instead, traced the northern border of Yucatan from east to west for most of the day,  so it now looks like it’s going to Texas, instead of Louisiana, to me.  (But NOAA has not yet re-charted a pathway.)

Most houses here in Centro adjoin, and are stone or block, so wind is less of an issue (aside from blowing trash, if winds get cranky).  And unlike blizzards, there’s no snow to shovel!  If water comes into the house, just push it out with a squeegee.  The soil is so well drained it will disappear quickly.  (Pasta tile floors don’t need carpets.)  

For daily forecasts I rely on Wunderground.com, rather than “the weather channel” as twc is owned by a climate-change denier. Tonight’s forecast?  I predict it will be dark and humid <grin>.

 

Hurricane DELTA comes ashore. (same site: GOES East)

 

 

East-west track along north shore.

The readout of my rooftop weather station signals by wifi indoors.

HOW TRUMP STOLE 2020 : : A Book Mention

Greg Palast, photo by Gabriel Olsen (fair use)

UP FRONT :  I don’t know this guy, and have not read his book, HOW TRUMP STOLE 2020. I happened upon an author interview that is worth visiting, which I’ve excerpted below.  Our author, depicted above, is intriguing — especially his very focused work on election fraud.  Here’s an excerpt between him, and Chris Hedges.  I ask you, dear reader, how crooked is this? — (note that I’ve blackened some type for emphasis, and quick digestion):

GP: Okay.  So, starting out with–you mentioned the system created by a guy called Interstate Crosscheck, created by a guy, as you’ll find the book called Kris Kobach of Kansas.  If you can’t remember that name just remember KKK.  Mr. KKK who was [INDISTINCT] State of Kansas created a hit list of people to remove, which he called Interstate Crosscheck, got a lot of press pray–praising him from the mainstream press saying he was hunting down all the people voting and registering in two states, which is a crime.  No reporter until I got in for Rolling Stone ever asked for the list, for the names, who were these evil double voters?  Why aren’t you arresting them?  They didn’t arrest anyone, 7.2 million suspects.  And you’ll see in the book there’s a chapter called 358 James Browns.  So, 358 James Browns were removed from the voter rolls of Georgia based on this hit list by Mr.KKK because he found, believe it or not, a James Brown in Detroit, and a James Brown in Baltimore, a James Brown in Phoenix, of course, they were matching and they’re saying it’s all the same voter, so they’re removing them.  Even though it’s James Edward Brown…

CH: Let me just–let me interrupt–let me interrupt you because this is …from the book.  They often… …have different middle names.   [ . . . ]

GP: Yeah.  So, you go James Thomas Brown–and this is an exact–this is a real example, James Thomas Brown and James Edward Brown are supposed to be the same voter.  But here’s the trick, how do they know it’s black?  Well, it’s simple.  So, I asked the Secretary of State of Michigan, “What color do you think Michael Brown is?”  I gave him a list of whole Michael Browns where not one middle name was matched that he’d removed.  They removed 50,000 voters in Michigan.  Fifty thousand voters in 2016 with names like Brown, and Garcia, and Kim, and Park, and Ho.  So, what’s happening is they take the common names.  Eighty-five–the one hundred most common names in America according to the census are minority names like Garcia and Rodriguez.  There are 832,000 Garcias in America, Chris.  And so, if you’re–like our expert said, if your name is Jose Garcia, you’ve been–you’re being accused of voting in 29 States.  I’m not kidding you, this is the stuff that they’re doing.  They’re not arresting anyone for double voting.  They’re simply erasing them because these clearly aren’t double voters.  But, yeah, at 1.1 million voters almost all voters of color were removed from voter rolls using this–that’s just one system.  You also mentioned this thing of–it’s kind of called Use it or Lose It or Purged by Postcard, what happens, you missed an election or for example, they blocked you from voting.  Wisconsin, you walk in, you’re a young person, you hand in your student ID, they say that’s no good.  You walk away, you didn’t vote.  Now, they take away your registration.  They say, oh, you skipped the election.  You’re “inactive.”  Now, what is an inactive voter?

source: podcast and text

Author bio, wikipedia

Is U.S.a banana republic?

BOOK LINK :  HOW TRUMP STOLE 2020

 

 

HIS HAIR’s-ON-FIRE. A Morality Tale.

 

Why is this man so angry?

IT IS SAID THAT PEOPLE IN HELL WANT ICE WATER.  “Hey, bar-keep, how’bout some service!  I’m rich, and I’m famous, and I’m tired of waitin’for your dumb ass!”  ¶  “Look, Bubba, I didn’t invite you in here.  And I don’t exactly want to be here, either.  I’m an outta-work school teacher.  Ya think I want this stoopid job?  Some idiot politician didn’t handle this plague, and now we’re all burnin’ with fever.  Hey, you look familiar!  You’re HIM!  You did this!  You told half the country not to wear masks!  MORON!  No ice water for you, JERK ! Git-outta-here!”  ¶ ”I’m not leaving until I get some ice water — or I’ll call Management and have you fired!”  ¶  “Yeah, what’s He gonna do? —Send me to some shit’hole country?  We’re stuck, Bubba, so you just best calm down.  I can’t believe I’m talkin’ to you, and now I get to tell it to ya, straight.  I voted for you ’cause you said you were gonna drain the swamp, but instead you stole from the collection plate.  Just like your ole’ man, always cheatin’.  I hear he taught you how, by opening a business for you, and then buying supplies from you at hugely inflated prices, to beat the tax man.  And you’been bankrupt six times, always stiffin’ the little vendors!  And I hear you’re teachin’ your daughter the same tricks.  I also heard every deal you ever made has a knife hidden in it which you twist at closing.”  ¶  “STIFLE, maestro, or no tip for you.”  “Ha!  You think I expect one?  You can just wait for the next shift to maybe bring some ice water, Mister Prissy. You’re gonna need it now that your tax bill is comin’ due.  Maybe the bar-keep at Rikers will give you a squirt of ice water to quench your thirst.”

TRUMP, A DANGEROUS, DESPERATE LOSER

 

Photo by PATRICK SEMANSKY / AP / from TheAtlantic, online (fair use)

Standby, ProudBoys ?   Scary, and desperate !

This bear, “Putin’s puppy” is now cornered in his cave, and he will do anything to remain in office rather than risk a New York prison sentence, including inviting social meltdown. (It is likely that he will soon be indicted by NY DA, Cyrus Vance, Jr, and/or NY Attorney General, Leticia James.)

He is suspected of so much fraud in New York State that he knows his only safe perch is the White House.  (He can’t commute a NY sentence from there, but he might forestall arrest.)  And we can imagine that he cares zero about whomever might be harmed in the process of retaining his cushy fortress, as he calls for chaos in the streets. 

We watched as the Soviet Union collapsed in the blink of an eye.  Get ready for an instant replay invited by an unstable dunce who can’t restrain himself long enough to honor debating rules to which he agreed — someone without a conscience, according to his co-author for The Art of the Deal.

Pulitzer-winning journalist Nick Kristof said: “The second way in which Trump damaged our country was by seeding further doubts about the election. He served as a mouthpiece for Russian-style propaganda about the illegitimacy of American democracy and laid the groundwork for postelection upheaval and violence. Here’s what Trump said: “As far as the ballots are concerned, it’s a disaster …. This is going to be a fraud like you’ve never seen …. It’s a rigged election.”

So, Trump, who urged voters in North Carolina to vote twice – and such urging is a felony, as is voting twice – complains about the rigging of our election which he himself has rigged!  The man is unAmerican!  I call upon honest Republicans to denounce him before he corrupts our democracy! — before this captain sinks the ship of state while attempting to save himself!  So much for his “law & order” claims. He’s a felon on the run.

Costa Concordia. Foto by Horacio Arevalo, Wikimedia Commons, IMG_0263, 12 February 2012

 

 

 

¿¿ DO WE KNOW THIS GUY ??

H e e e e r e ‘s    D O N N Y  ! ! ! . . .

Maybe we should feel sorry for him?  All those hours he spent as a teenager studying the life and career of Johnny Carson, and modeling himself after that man’s wit and presence. Yes, Johnny was fun; and kids long for role models. This kid even became a reality-TV star.  Yet I would argue that he’s a misfit for his current position, with severely limited leadership and business skills.  He has failed as a leader, calling a pandemic “a hoax which will disappear soon”, instead resulting in the deaths of over 200,000 Americans — that’s like 66 attacks of 9/11!

Photo from Snopes dot com (fair use)

And then there’s THE PRESIDENT’S TAXES, a story from the front page of New York Times, telling how the man has failed as a businessman, but succeeded in bilking real taxpayers out of more than $72 million in a tax refund, for failing!  Here’s a quote from the first few lines of the article, and a link

From the back seat of a stretch limousine heading to meet the first contestants for his new TV show “The Apprentice,” Donald J. Trump bragged that he was a billionaire who had overcome financial hardship.
     “I used my brain, I used my negotiating skills and I worked it all out,” he told viewers. “Now, my company is bigger than it ever was and stronger than it ever was.”
     It was all a hoax.
     Months after that inaugural episode in January 2004, Mr. Trump filed his individual tax return reporting $89.9 million in net losses from his core businesses for the prior year. The red ink spilled from everywhere, even as American television audiences saw him as a savvy business mogul with the Midas touch.

 

Note: this photo is not from NYTimes, and I can’t find out about it, but it looks troubling to me, yet it could be innocent.  Don’s friend, Jeffrey Epstein, might know more, but he’s no longer on the planet to explain.
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When someone shows you who they are, believe them; the first time.  ~Maya  Angelou
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Don’s a killer. His father taught him there are only 2 choices: killer, or king

Don’t rehire a failed CEO !!!

Official Presidential Portrait, Government Printing Office, 2017

 

Twitter @realDonaldTrump, Nov27, 2019  (fair use)  TheGuardian

False Prophet

Excerpts from The Atlantic, by McKay Coppins, April 15 2020:

On February 28, Donald Trump stood before a crowd of supporters in South Carolina and told them to pay no attention to the growing warnings of a coronavirus outbreak in America. The press was “in hysteria mode,” the president said. The Democrats were playing politics. This new virus was nothing compared with the seasonal flu—and anyone who said otherwise was just trying to hurt him. “This is their new hoax,” Trump proclaimed, squinting out from behind a podium adorned with the presidential seal.

Six weeks later, the coronavirus has killed more than 25,000 Americans, the U.S. economy has been crippled—and Trump is recasting himself as a pandemic prophet. At Monday’s White House briefing, the president responded to questions about his handling of the crisis by dimming the lights and playing an Orwellian campaign-style video: “THE MEDIA MINIMIZED THE RISK FROM THE START,” the onscreen text read, “WHILE THE PRESIDENT TOOK DECISIVE ACTION.”

This flagrant recasting of recent events wasn’t a fluke. For the past several months, I’ve been reporting on the “disinformation architecture that Trump’s coalition of partisan media, propagandists, operatives, and trolls are relying on [ . . .]   “I knew it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic,” the president boasted last month. “I knew everything,” he reiterated a couple of weeks later. Asked to assess his response to the virus, he responded emphatically, “I’d rate it at 10.”  [. . .more. . .]

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by Darrin Bell – King Features, (fair use)

 

 

Dave Whamond, Copyright 2020 Cagle Cartoons. (fair use)  . 

I’ve shared these reports and views as a citizen-journalist and US Navy veteran, who cares deeply about community.  ~MeridaGOround

 

!! WOE to the NATION which REVERES PERSONALITY !!

from the website of the President of the Russian Federation licensed under the Creative CommonsAttribution 4.0  via Wikimedia Commons.  June 2019

Robert Reich asks a powerful question about our nation:  

Who’s the pinko in the striped tie, and why is Putin smirking?  If you recall much about American history, you will remember an era when Senator Joe McCarthy was rabid about evicting communists from our government and our society.  McCarthy’s mentor and bulldog, Roy Cohn, later became a disbarred lawyer, and Donald Trump’s mentor;  yet the game has changed, and Trump is in bed with them now.  There’s even a scary movie, worth watching, based on a Trump quote: Where’s my Roy Cohn?

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Reich’s essay is also worth pondering.  Whenever nations idolize a leader, they are often inclined to fail shortly thereafter, especially if said leader has divided the citizenry.  America, BEWARE.

“REVERED LEADERS”             Whitehouse photo, via Wikimedia Commons.

 

TRUMP’s DEMENTIA . . . LEAKED

Screenshot from Mother Jones. (fair use)  >>CLICK here >>

Sept 18. Mother Jones has now obtained the full video of Trump’s deposition [from Trump University suit]

When Forge asked, “Do you believe you have one of the best memories in the world?”  Trump replied, “That I can’t tell you.” Forge noted that Trump had previously stated he indeed possessed one of the best memories in the world and referenced an NBC News report from the previous month in which Trump had declared he had “the world’s greatest memory.” Trump said, “I don’t remember that.”  Here it is [on tape, in his own words, and more] . . . Scroll to paragraph /video titled Trump’s Memory: Best in World then click to play.  Watch his eyes.

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!! USE A REAL STAMP !!

IF you must vote by mail, use a real stamp!  A slow free ride could cancel your ballot, according to post office’s top lawyer!

EXCERPT:

“Multiple states received communications from the USPS general counsel outlining standard mail delivery times and prices leading up to the November election and warning secretaries of state that election laws established by the states would not necessarily guarantee that mail-in ballots will be received in time to be counted.  [. . .]

“USPS General Counsel Thomas Marshall wrote to California’s secretary of state that there is “a significant risk that some ballots will not be returned by mail in time to be counted under your laws as we understand them.’.
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“The letters suggest election mail be sent by first class mail, at a higher rate than the nonprofit rate most states use, an obstacle for cash-strapped states dealing with the pandemic.”