This observation actually comes from my wife:
The police in Highland Park, IL were able to arrest a white suspect accused of killing at least six people and injuring dozens more without firing a shot, despite the fact that the suspect had a rifle in his car when they stopped him.
The police in Akron, OH, had to fire some 90 rounds, hitting the black suspect in a "traffic stop" 60 times and killing him--even though he was running from them after leaving his weapon in his car.
This occurred to me just this morning: Have the Republicans inadvertently become the proverbial dog who caught the car?
For the past 50 years, the GOP campaign has relied on primarily two issues to drive their base to the polls: abortion and guns. It has worked because the voters for whom those two issues are important (and they are not necessarily always the same voters) are, for the most part, one-issue voters. For the misnamed pro-life crowd, if a politician was opposed to abortion and supported the overturning of Roe v. Wade, it didn't matter what else he or she supported. Nothing else mattered. For the strident Second Amendment supporters, if the politician would vote against even the most reasonable gun control measures, nothing else was important.
Well now, at least for the abortion issue, the fight is over. Roe v. Wade has been scrapped. There's no longer anything to drive those one-issue voters to the polls, at least in federal level elections. (There may still be states where the issue will remain a controversy in the legislature or in governor's races, but on the congressional and Presidential levels, it's a done-deal.) So, can the GOP still count on those folks as committed Republican voters? Hell, can they can count on them to vote at all? They've won the only fight they cared about, why would they bother?
Does this mean a serious diminution of Republican power at the ballot box? I think it might.
I needed a day to process what I was going to say on this.
Yesterday, I was glad I never had daughters, but saddened for my brother, who has two, my nephew who has three, and all my other relatives and friends who have daughters and granddaughters. I will never face (unless one of my sons begets a girl) what each of them may now someday deal with--a loved child or grandchild who cannot get the medical care she needs.
I know how even the best birth control can fail. My first son was conceived while my wife was "on the pill". I know how complications can arise in even a well-cared-for pregnancy; my wife had to go on bed rest for the final trimester of her first pregnancy and underwent an emergency C-section when the doctors could not get an adequate response from the monitoring equipment during labor. (Fortunately, there was nothing really wrong--just my recalcitrant son lying in an odd position in the womb.)
No patient should have their legitimate options in such a situation curtailed by a legislature's or judge's view of when "life begins." That should only be between the parents (and primarily the mother), their doctor, and their religion (whichever one, if any, that may be). I am not, personally, in favor of "abortion-on-demand"...but that is my personal belief and it should not be imposed on anyone else, anymore than my personal belief that liver is unedible. (You like liver? Go for it--just don't expect me to join you. And if I decide an abortion is the right choice for my situation, I won't ask you to participate.)
One last thing--pay heed to Justice Thomas's dissent, in which he suggests that other rulings (such as the ones in favor of contraception, criminalization of gay sex and gay marriage) based on much the same interpretation should be re-examined. (I note he does not include the long-standing decision on inter-racial marriage--also based on that interpretation. Perhaps it strikes too close to home?)
Been quite a while since I posted, but two recent incidents lead me to finally do so.
Just over a week ago, a police chase involving multiple cop cars speeding around the area (apparently in pursuit of a thief from the local Home Depot) ended literally outside my door, though thankfully on the other side of the street. (I live on a major road, just off the intersection with a secondary road and near a shopping center and the police station.) I didn't get any pictures of that.
But yesterday afternoon, about 5:00 PM, a big tractor-trailer (operated by Wawa, regional convenience store chain) broke down, again right outside my house, this time on my side of the street and blocking my driveway. The driver, when I asked, explained that his transmission was "busted" and pointed to the leak of fluid coming from the vehicle.
Never a dull moment around here.
My local papet, The Delaware County Daily Times, has a feature called "Sound Off" in which readers can call or e-mail with anonymous commentary on news or local events or just a personal pet peeve.
Today, it included what has to be the most heartless two paragraphs I have ever read in my life. At first, I thought the author was dealing in sarcasm, but by the second paragraph I knew she was deadly (and I mean that adverb literally) serious. Here it is in its entirety:
NOTHING TO SEE HERE
I hate these school shootings! Every single time there’s one, the same people start with the whining. “Oh the guns! Oh the guns are bad! We have to do something about all the guns!” Here’s what needs to be done about all the guns. Nothing. That’s right. Nothing. Because it’s not the big awful problem these dummies try to make it out to be. These Dumocrats, they exaggerate everything. Look, there are tens of millions of schoolkids in the country. In any given year, how many get gunned down?
A couple dozen, maybe three dozen in a busier year. Out of so many millions of kids, that’s nothing! Look, COVID was another big exaggeration, but more kids probably died from that than from school shootings. Just stop with the moaning. Crying about it only makes more people want to shoot up schools. Stop making those shootings front-page news. There’s more important things going on, like how Biden is destroying the country.
MARCI
I have nothing more to say.
After nearly 50 years, it's tough for me to remember these events exactly, but I first recall meeting George Perez at Jim Glenn's home in Brooklyn in 1975 (maybe '76). Jim and I had just published the second issue of our fanzine, Factors Unknown, and up until then, it had consisted only of stuff Jim and I had done, including our creations the Hazardman and the Symbiote. I don't remember where Jim encountered George (and his friend Tom Sciacca) but they were there to show us some pages to publish in the the next issue.
That got George noticed by pro artist Rich Buckler, who hired him as an assistant--and that got George noticed by the editors at Marvel. His career took off rapidly, with assignments to marquee titles like Fantastic Four and Avengers. He never looked back after that.
I am very proud to have had a small part in introducing this talent to the world...and I am extremely sad now at his passing.
There's so much I could say about George Perez, who died on Friday at the age of 67 after a battle with cancer, but I need time to work it all out in my head (and my heart). He was still a teenager and I was barely out of college when we met, so I have to work through a lot of memory and history.
I'll get to it.
