The Other Big Lie
Reproductive Freedom is ON the ballot...across the nation.
I so want to write about the stalking gobblers that have taken up residence in my neighborhood. They are feral and the mothers of each brood are careful watchers. We think they roost in our small forest of pines. They stroll by our open windows in the wee morning hours mumbling to themselves.
I’d describe it as more cooing than gobbling, though not like doves coo.
I so want to write about the gall bladder I just had removed. Not sure if it was in the nick of time or not but the gallstone inside set a record for size with my surgeon. She told my wife afterwards it may have been the nudge needed for her attending medical student to pursue surgery instead of pharmaceuticals or podiatry.
Pleased to be recognized for something but, unfortunately, larger gallstones require larger incisions. So there was a downside I feel every time I attempt to use my hidden six pack.
I so want to write about how the Harris/Walz campaign is kicking ass. If only all campaigns were so brief and focused and full of energy. Even so, political pundits continue to remind the politically rapt that the typical voter has yet to tune in.
Supposedly that happens in October. Thus the oft-mentioned October Surprise.
I’ve been reading articles decrying the uselessness of pointing out the convicted felons’ negatives and audacious utterances. These articles suggest we should be focusing on telling people more about the first woman to ever hold the office of Vice President of the United States. How she rose through the political ranks like a comet — burning just as brightly — if her resumé canvas was the night sky. These articles rightly surmise that no words antagonistic toward the faux billionaire will ever persuade his unpersuadable base. So, no need to squander reason on the unreasonable, better to cheerily educate them about how not-fascist Kamala Harris will be. About how her message parallels Ronald Reagan’s “it’s morning in America” shtick.
The Kamala Harris campaign is sparkling water compared to the kerosene used in Molotov cocktails of the reactionary’s campaign.
I have a bone to pick with that sorry-assed old man. You know, the one who was humiliated in the most recent debate.
He said — when it came to Roe — he just made it possible for each state to decide. He acted like it made no difference to him (during the debate) whether a state banned or allowed reproductive freedom.
This is the very same argument used prior to The Civil War. Leave it to the states to decide, the white men cried. It’s a state’s rights argument, they claimed. Each state should make up its own mind as to whether they can place Others in bondage. Enslave entire families for lifetimes. It made no sense then and it makes no sense now.
Trouble is, that’s not how the repercussions from the Dobbs decision unfolded.
The people of the states — as a whole — were not given a hand in the legislation that got handed down faster than the blade of a guillotine. Legislators in some states jumped on the opportunity to require forced births under virtually any circumstance as if the Dobbs decision was handed down via a seer stone in a bowler or burning bushes.
I’ll bet in places like Texas they set record times passing laws that stripped rights away from — what they consider to be — their “mouthy” women.
It makes me wonder why these patriarchal strongholds didn’t put it to the vote of the people. Why not just let their constituents decide? The answer is too obvious. The not-so-moral and definitely-not-silent and — actually — not-a-majority (not even close) knew that was a vote they’d lose.
Reproductive freedom IS health care. Forced birth laws are fascist (it’s all about control) and can be deleterious to a woman’s well being and health.
Contraception helps you plan ahead. Denying contraception is a means of control.
In vitro fertilization (IVF) provides options. Passing legislation giving ‘personhood’ to embryos truly undermines womens’ freedom once again.
Reinstating a geriatric failed businessman into the White House (he would be 82 years old in 2028) — no matter what he claims publicly — would be the beginning of the end of reproductive freedom…nationwide. This thought — by itself — ought to represent the death knell of the man’s campaign.
To date, every deep scarlet red state in the nation that has allowed their people to vote in regards to reproductive freedom has voted in favor of keeping their reproductive rights. So, it seems like a slam dunk for the Harris/Walz campaign.
But the problem is our untuned, inattentive voters.
They may choose to believe and take the serial adulterer at his word — that he will not push a national ban on reproductive freedom. Couple that with taking him at his word about other topics of which he has the vaguest notion and they might come to their own conclusion that there are two reasonable choices in this election.
I know the choir to which I am singing this tune do not need to hear this — but there are not TWO reasonable choices in this election.
After more than four decades of spiraling down into a political box canyon, we have reached the GOP endgame.
For reactionaries now leading the Republican Party, it is all about control, power, money…and none of it inclusive. The hate that motivated them across the decades has finally been distilled into this toxic brew of policies and a dis-ease of democratic principles.
Legislation in red states across the South severely restricting reproductive health — following the Supreme Court putting their conservative thumbs on the scales, a Supreme Court significantly altered by the man who claims to have no ideological stake in women’s reproductive health — has been in place long enough to show the hurt and damage it causes. We are no longer talking hypotheticals. As sure as women died from backroom do-it-yourself surgeries with coat hangers in the first half of the last century, they are dying from a legislated lack of care now.
Just the other day — at one of the convicted felons hate rallies — he said (in reference to women), “…you will never have to think of abortions…” His previous utterances included his promise to take care of women and to protect them.
It’s his other Big Lie. Amongst a litany of lies big and small.
You can be assured, the only person he plans to take care of and protect is his own sorry ass. Dodging accountability is his lone guiding light and his only motivation on the campaign trail.
Have you read anything this uplifting in the mainstream media lately? From That’s Another Fine Mess on Substack.
Women over 50 number nearly 62 million, and traditionally have had the highest voter turnout record, particularly among black women. In 2020, these voters formed 25% ofhe overall population and 33% of the voting population.
While women of all ages are respponding to calls to protect women’s health care and the right to abortion, among the over-65 women, 63 percent of those over 50 feel less financially secure than they expected to be; 41 percent don’t have sufficient savings to cover an emergency expense; 44 percent don’t have a retirement savings account or pension.
Women pay attention to Harris when she points out the Biden administration’s successful negotiations with insurance companies to lower the cost of Medicare’s 10 most expensive drugs.
They pay attention to Harris’ tax plan to save Social Security.
While young people listen to Democratic plans to increase support for families through the child tax credit, increasing support for starting a small business, and assistance in buying a first home, as well as canceling student debt, their mothers and grandmothers - who worry about the futures of their offspring - are listening to those plans also.
And they pay attention to Project 2025's plan to privatize Social Security, end the caps on medicine cost, and cut the proposed programs for family support.
I think all of this points to the crucial voting demographic this election being women over 65. And when I think of the women I have known of that generation from our college days onward, I have no doubt of their ability to win the day on November 5.
Also, here’s an excerpt from writer Walter Rhein’s latest Substack titled I’d Rather Be Writing — Any Nation That Protects Bodily Autonomy for Women Is Better Than the US :
One of the main issues we have in the United States is that conservatives are so indoctrinated with their own delusional sense of superiority that they are blind to the problems their policies create. I suspect that this is a side-effect of self-righteousness. If you are mature and you take responsibility for your mistakes it’s impossible to be self-righteous.
Without fail, the people I most respect in the world are those who are constantly uncertain whether or not they are doing the right thing.
Vote early, and Vote often.
Shout the word out, ladies!