2021 Archives

The best of the rest of the news. — On this day that America remembers 9/11, as many people as died that day will die this weekend because Republican politicians across America have banned mask mandates in our schools and “conservative” media like Fox “News” promote anti-vax lies and hysteria. Meanwhile, it’s a virtual guarantee that none of today’s media coverage will mention how the Bush/Cheney were warned multiple times that “Bin Laden [Was] Determined To Strike Within the US” and ignored the warnings while Cheney was carving up Iraqi oil fields and Bush told Tony Blair, 3 days after 9/11, that he was going to use the terror attack as a rationale to attack Iraq. Nor will there be any mention of how the government of Afghanistan had virtually nothing to do with 9/11. But on this terrible anniversary, Donald Trump is bragging to the media that he’s going to make “an obscene amount of money” calling a boxing match.

The monster of fear, hate, and greed the right wingers have created – as it rises from the primordial mud and shakes itself into life – will eventually consume them. Many commentators and pundits have worried out loud that the Texas “precedent” of using vigilantism to end safe, legal abortion in that state is either wildly unconstitutional or, if it stands, will set a precedent to take down other rights like free speech or protest. Republicans are playing with fire here, but it’s not just around abortion rights. They’re also explicitly going after a wide variety of other rights that Americans have fought to maintain for centuries.

Genuine patriots work to heal a country, to bring out its best, to strengthen its social and political fabric and make a better nation and world for future generations. They show up at school board and city council meetings sometimes literally wrapped in the American flag while carrying semiautomatic weapons in one hand and bibles in the other, screaming obscenities and threats at public officials. They demand that children be exposed to Covid in school, then support governors who refuse federal money to expand Medicaid in 12 GOP-controlled states that would have paid for the medical treatment of low-income kids and their parents when they become ill.

The best of the rest of the news. — Roe v Wade is dead and, along with it, are equal rights for women in Texas. For over 50 years, Republicans have fought the Equal Rights Amendment and with their new vigilantism abortion legislation they’re tightening the screws on the rights to privacy, equal protection and bodily autonomy women still had. As Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote: “This is untenable. It cannot be the case that a State can evade federal judicial scrutiny by outsourcing the enforcement of unconstitutional laws to its citizenry. ... [The] Court has rewarded the State's effort to delay federal review of a plainly unconstitutional statute, enacted in disregard of the Court's precedents, through procedural entanglements of the State's own creation. The Court should not be so content to ignore its constitutional obligations to protect not only the rights of women, but also the sanctity of its precedents and of the rule of law.” The question now, as I posited in Thursday’s Daily Rant, is whether the voters of Texas will reward or punish that state’s GOP (and, indeed, Republicans across the country) for this. My guess is that this is not a “victory” for the GOP — they wanted the issue so they could pander to its hardcore adherents (who only make up about a third of the base) during election time — but the majority of voters and probably of Republicans will think twice when the long arm of Greg Abbott’s law reaches out for their daughters, wives and friends. I believe they’re overreached and this, along with Covid denialism, will hurt the GOP badly in 2022. If not, G-d help us all.