It’s Never As Simple As It Seems

258 thoughts on “It’s Never As Simple As It Seems”

1. A few years ago, the planned parenthood videos came out where the monster abortionists casually revealed that baby parts were bought and sold. The media tried to debunk the videos, but anyone could go look at them.

   And then Cecil the Lion was poached in Africa by a dentist, and the media went barking, foaming, spittle flying crazy. Jimmy Kimmel wept on air. The dentist’s patients were doxxed and threatened. I observed this, and “projection” came to mind. The liberals could not admit that abortion is barbaric and evil. So they turned to Cecil and unloaded all their grief and rage on the dead lion. They could not face reality, but they had to have an outlet for the emotions they denied. The other word that comes to mind for this is “insane.”

   1. Cecil wasn’t poached. He had wandered off from the protected area, into one the gov’t sold hunts on to finance their wildlife protection, and he was culled.

   2. And how many remember the follow-up to that outrage? The local government going out and killing all lions in the area. Because the only reason to keep those nuisance animals around in the first place was that Americans (and others) liked to come and shoot them. And the outrage meant that it would be a few years before people would come back for the lion sport-shooting.

      1. Oh, THAT was not publicized, nope. I think I would have remembered that one.

      2. I remember a follow up, not widely publicized, where an African villager wondered aloud why Americans cared about a dead lion but not the African children that are regularly eaten by lions.

         1. I never expect rational thought from the left. It’s been known for decades in the US that the reason poor bambi is able to be hunted, or all those waterfowl and upland game birds are still around, is because the hunters pay for privilege of going out in the cold, and the dark, to spend several hours alone with like minded people a few weeks a year. And in order to do that, they also supplement actual conservation efforts like Ducks Unlimited and such so that more animals are available.

         2. I replied to that in several forums and the response was always “but that’s illegal REEEEEEEE”. My response was always a variant of Andrew Jackson: “you ecoloons made that law. Now you can get shot trying to enforce it. Because no one else is.”

   3. And this is “progressive” liberalism — i.e., Marxist derangement — in a nutshell. A cycle of emotional projection, hysterical reaction, mob action, unexamined consequences, and societal breakage that repeats everywhere in venues large and small.

   4. It was Kamala Harris who abused the power of her office as State AG to go after Project Veritas for exposing Planned Parenthood’s repugnant and illegal practices, never mind that Project Veritas only did what CBS has done with 60 Minutes for decades.

      1. Kamala abusing her state AG office? you don’t say!

2. Abortions were probably cheaper than contraception especially when factoring in failures.

   1. Unlikely. More likely that was part of what was being sold, if unstated.

      Recall, everything involving anything related to that will be rooted in reproductive strategies. Some will be broken mirrors, some will be unethical in the extreme, and many will not even be conscious, but all come from that one fundamental.

      1. Why would the johns care why she didn’t give birth?

3. I must disagree with you on the Supreme Court. They very likely will overturn Roe & Casey.
   Once the decision was made to debate & test Blackmun’s decision instead of celebrating it from afar, it was clear that as a legal matter it was awful. Even the notorious RGB agreed that, as a legal matter, it was problematic.
   D.C. needs to prepare for a “mostly peaceful” summer.

   1. The Reader will offer an alternate explanation although he will allow in advance that he may be wrong. From Dread Justice Roberts press release yesterday – ‘Although the document described in yesterday’s reports is authentic, it does not represent a decision by the Court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case’. Add to that that he is not referring the leak for outside investigation and the whole thing stinks.

      The Reader has always thought that the Court would do another Mobius pretzel on the Mississippi law. Uphold it by declaring viability to be 15 weeks but leave the basic Roe structure intact and the Escherish logic left to another day to sort out. The Reader thinks this leak was Robert’s doing to show the Left ‘look how much worse it could have been’ when the decision is released in June.

      1. It’s certainly possible that Roberts would like to do that – but I don’t think he has the ability to pull it off in this case. When he is the swing vote he can get concessions – but in this case his vote is not necessary.

         1. The Reader believes he’ll get Kavanaugh and the libs to go along. The fact that the leaked draft was from February makes the Reader think this is a Dread Justice Roberts head fake.

            1. If it is, he just nuked the Supreme Court for it.

               1. He nuked the Supreme Court when he declared Obamacare a tax. We are still in the midst of bomb damage assessment.

                  1. There were a lot of elements to the process that made the supreme court, and the formal legal system, less significant.

                  2. A tax, that the bill wasn’t originated in the House IIRC. Which makes it problematic.

   2. I have been an attorney of record in two winning Constitutional law cases decided by SCOTUS…Yes, they will overrule the awful Roe decision–or become a laughingstock..Alito’s opinion is a masterpiece of legal analysis…but the bottom line is that Roe was an improperly taken case (she had already given birth, so it was moot) and the reasoning in it completely missed the fact that there is no “right to privacy” in the Constitution and there is no excuse for taking regulation of abortion away from the States and handing it to the Federal court system…Blackmun’s “science” would embarrass a high school kid…Welcome to democracy! If you don’t like your State’s laws, change them, or travel to a State more to your liking…

   3. More to the point, failing to overturn Roe would be a betrayal.

      Logically, legally, and morally, Roe was wrongly decided.

      If we can’t get this abortion of a judicially-created “law” overturned after half a century of reform, constant pressure, and with a 6-3 majority…
      Then the institution itself has become an abomination.

      The ruling will be on whether Rule of Law exists, or if there is only Will to Power.
      The Right is done with double standards.

4. Society pays a cost for abortions, even when we’re not the ones forking over tax dollars for them. I don’t see that the “benefits” outweigh the costs; even for the women getting the abortions. The MEN on the other hand, seem to be reaping the most benefit – they don’t have to acknowledge the child, or provide care for it, or maintain a relationship with the object of their lust. Yes, it’s a choice, all bad ones.

   1. The “benefit” to Planned Parenthood and the elite is population control and culling of “less desirable” races in their eyes. Check out the history of the organization, they and Ford gave Hitler ideas…

      Of course the left will never admit their past, nor the racism, nor keeping the “less desirable” on the welfare plantation while destroying the families.

      1. The writers of the Nazi’s Nuremberg laws expressly cited and praised Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger for her ideas on eugenics. Shrillary still speaks fondly of her award from Planned Parenthood named after one of the Nazi’s ideological forbears.

5. The result of eliminating inequity is, itself, inequitable.

   The story of Procrustes was not intended to be an instruction manual, it was intended to convey the horror of trying to force everybody to be the same, to lose their individual uniqueness. As with every other example of traditional morality, Liberals have turned it on its head.

6. Overturning Roe would have the interesting effect of requiring politicians, Republican politicians too, to vote on abortion. We overlook the immense utility of Roe in allowing Republicans to virtue signal while their Democrat colleagues avoid having to vote in favor of third trimester abortion. Works for everyone in the swamp.

   I do think it’s time to start calling people what they are. Baby Killer, Groomer, Crazy.

   1. Had a pretty fun “argument” on the white board in the break room at work when they opened up suggestions for the division’s annual Christmas donation. Some nitwit wrote “Planned Parenthood” in great big letters. I wrote “please, no” in much smaller letters, which were erased and replaced by a big red “YES.” I wrote “PP is a $2 billion organization, they don’t need it.” Somebody then crossed through it and wrote some stupid feminist slogan I can’t remember. I then wrote “abortion kills human beings.”

      I don’t remember if there was a comeback to that one, but shortly after, the whole thing got erased and replaced by a handful of small boxes, into which we could drop a slip of paper; for each slip, the company would donate to the org named on the box. They were all local/state orgs, mostly oriented toward helping children and families. Sometimes calling it what it is — or at least saying “no, let’s not all participate” — does work.

      1. another thing that could be said is “PP sells parts of babies to the Chinese.

         1. Yes. This is what finally broke me out of the morass of seeming conundrums that obscure the issue and turned me away from any tolerance of abortion on demand.

            If abortionists can sell parts of dead fetuses to people who need human organs for experimentation, then it’s absolutely clear that every abortion kills a human being. And not just any human, but humans at the most innocent and vulnerable stage of life.

            The only question left, then, is under what conditions we’re willing to encourage killing innocent, helpless human beings en masse. For me — and, I believe, for any sane person who looks at it clearly — the only answer is NEVER.

            1. Yep. I get, on a case by case basis, that sometimes things are necessary. If two conjoined twins are sharing a heart and they can’t live like that, you have to make a decision to try to separate, and one of them will probably die. Sometimes you have to remove life support. But there are legal and medical mechanisms and procedures for those cases, and those can be applied in the case of terminations. It’s not “Well, we’ll just go to the clinic and get rid of the evidence. No muss, no fuss.”
               Late-term abortions due to confirmation of Down’s status? That’s straight-up murder for convenience.

               And that’s apart from the real and actual health concerns that premature/induced termination of pregnancy place on your body.

               1. Late-term abortions due to confirmation of Down’s status? That’s straight-up murder for convenience.

                  :points at folks on the high-functioning end of the spectrum:

                  And that “cure” for Down’s has been noticed.

                  Especially when activist groups start yelling that they’re going to find a way to identify anybody ‘at risk’ for the tragedy of being any sort of autistic, explicitly including high functioning….

                  Then the [bleep]ers are shocked to get resistance.

      2. Heh.
         When the BLM BS started going about 8 years ago, I was having to spend time visiting a hospital on a college campus. Since the hospital execs had banned salt, and soda that wasn’t decaffeinated and sugar free, one day I wandered over to the Student Union Building for food.
         They had a public forum whiteboard that had been taken over by BLM propaganda.
         I decided to add information about how many black lives end in abortion.
         It was a small thing, but maybe it opened some eyes before it was erased.

         1. Thumbs up. Even if it didn’t open any eyes, it could have been seen by somebody who thought the way you do — and there’s huge value in knowing you’re not alone and that someone who agrees with you isn’t afraid to speak against lies.

   2. …Disciple of Mass Murdering Ideology? Useful Idiot?

      1. Add death cultists to the list.

   3. At the State level, liberal states will have liberal abortion laws, more conservative states will probably have restrictive laws..a couple may even ban it..Welcome to the “48 laboratories” as Justice Brandeis said was a huge strength of the American system…

7. When did education burn to heck? When did history get lost in media-endorsed (largely Marxist) narrative? 1920? — don’t have anything to replace the “received slogans” with. They’ve never doubted or thought very deeply about what they were told. They were never skeptical. They never looked for reality.

   I doubt that mass education had ever been particularly good. There are strong reasons for it not to be:

   It’s a lot easier to teach slogans than provide actual education. Unless the teacher REALLY CARES about the students, the easy route is very appealing.
   Whoever pays the tune calls the piper. In 1914 people actually celebrated being drafted to fight a war (https://www.historycrunch.com/excitement-for-world-war-i.html#/), Presumably, their government provided education told them it’ll be fun (https://www.sociostudies.org/almanac/articles/mass_primary_education_in_the_nineteenth_century).

   Very few governments really want their subjects to think critically.

8. Sarah, first as to your invocation of people swallowing the simple explanation because it’s easy and comfortable, there’s the quotes I keep handy:
   The fundamental paradigm of Communist ideology is guaranteed to have wide appeal: you suffer; your suffering is caused by powerful others; these oppressors must be destroyed. –Leszek Kolakowski

   “They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, “You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.” No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.” –Abraham Lincoln

   As to timing of the destruction of traditional schooling, In this country I trace its origin to the 60’s (BTW I consider the 60’s to be 1964 (when the Beatles played Ed Sullivan and 1974 or 76 depending on when you place the end of the Vietnam War). i was educated in a high school in rural America, and patriotism was still taught and preached, admittedly in the same jingoistic and unthinking way that the Marxism that replaced it was/is. That period was the rise of the unions in public schools, and unions are traditionally the vehicles used by communists to first spread their poisonous doctrine. See Ronald Reagan about the Screen Actors Guild, and Whitaker Chambers about other unions. Slogans are much easier to chant than coherent thoughts (see above quotes). Thinking people are few and far between, and we odds are never comfortable members of the tribe.

   1. I graduated High School in suburbia in ’75. Yes, patriotism was still taught and Civics as a separate class was still offered (and taught well).
      OTOH, Social Studies classes celebrated all the achievements of FDR, and anything taught about Woodrow Wilson was pretty thoroughly sanitized.
      Government schools will always be biased in favor of the government. Some may also offer a decent education – but the former is more certain than the latter…

   2. The Reader thinks the rot started before then. A story as to why.

      When the Reader graduated from Land Grant U. in 1975 the graduation ceremony was split into two parts. The first was held in the stadium. The PhD candidates were awarded their degrees there and the rest of us got to move our tassel (department level ceremonies were held after for BS and MS candidates). The Reader passed the time by reading all of the titles of the PhD theses that were in the program. When the Reader got to the thesis titles from the Department of Education he had a WTF moment. All of the titles were gibberish – English words strung together without meaning. Later the Reader asked his mother (who had graduated from a ‘teachers college’ in the 1940s) if she had seen anything like that when she studied; the answer was a resounding no. So somewhere between 1946 and 1975 colleges of education went to hell and if they were generating useless PhDs in the 70’s the Reader would bet it happened in the 50s.

      1. That could explain my third year French teacher in the mid 1970’s. I had two years of French from a wonderful old lady who was a great teacher, but then retired. She was replaced by someone straight from college. We were assigned to read “The Plague” by Camus, and I actually did. It was hard slogging, it was no where near anything I would have been interested in reading otherwise, but I loved foreign languages and it was the only thing my high school had on offer.

         We did not discuss it in French in class, and then the entire test was in English.

         I actually walked out of class and went home, and then dropped the class.

         1. The Reader admires anyone who could get though “The Plague” in French. The Reader had enough trouble with the English translation.

            1. It was horrible and depressing. I had to painfully look up just about every word for conveying negative things in the French language. I don’t remember a single bit of the story.

            2. Difficult yes, but doing your job just because it’s your job has stuck with me, especially in the absurd times we live. One of those books you’re different after reading.

      2. Here’s a data point from a few years earlier. I lived in a well-regarded suburban school district, and American History was required for all students. Part of that reading was Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. This was in the ’68-’69 school year, when a teacher’s union was just getting started.

         The next year, I was in some form of freeform social studies honors clusterf*ck class, and we were supposed to go to a big city matinee showing of Medium Cool. The rest of the class was much like that; lots of liberal feelz indoctrination. As the class Odd, it didn’t entirely take. (We didn’t see the movie; the “organizer” forgot to ask what days matinees were shown, so we got there when the theater was dark, and saw Easy Rider instead. Could have been worse, modulo the X rating, Midnight Cowboy was showing. Ecch. Rider was barely tolerable, mostly for OK music. Never saw Cool. Ever.)

         By HS graduation in 1970, I’d had a drink of the Ehrlich Koolaid, and actually thought Zero Population Growth was a good idea. OTOH, I never was a fan of abortion. Got mixed up with some people who treated abortion as a valid and preferable form of contraception. I didn’t run at first, but eventually did.

      3. In the late-90s/early2ks, my Aunt was an… assistant principal (I think) in a large NorthEastern school district. For further career development, she needed a Ph.D. In Education. So she entered the summers-plus-night-school-plus-dissertation program at nearby BigU.

         Talking with her at family reunions durint that period was both interesting and enlightening. First off, she described all the required course work as “worse than useless, generally wrong, and sometimes dangerously wrong.” As a mid-to-late career educator, she had more than enough real-world experience to KNOW that the real world works very differently than the program claimed, and that the starting assumptions for pretty much everything in the Education department at BigU were so far from reality as to prevent even honest, well-meaning researchers from stumbling on something useful. [I wish I remembered enough details to share anything beyond her opinion. But… 20 years.] She then went on to observe that there might be a small number of honest, well-meaning researchers in that very large department. Maybe.

         She also wanted to get SOMETHING useful out of her time at BigU, so she went and took extra courses on childhood development and education over in the Psych department. She claimed that about ⅓ of the psych courses had enough connection to reality that they were worthwhile, so she wound up taking more psych courses than the total credit requirement from the Ed department. She even thought that a modest majority of the psych faculty were honest and well-meaning. Sadly, honest and well-meaning didn’t always go along with “starting from assumptions that at least resemble reality.” Sigh.

         The uphot of all this is that her dissertation was…. crap. Crap that was carefully structured to make her thesis committee happy, but crap nonetheless. Further, the education department gave exactly ZERO credit for courses taken over in the Psych department, and strongly advocated that she “not waste her time” over there. The entire value of the Ph.D. program was checking the box that would allow further promotion with additional responsibility and pay. Plus the ⅓ of the extra courses she took over in Psych that were useful.

         1. The Reader notes that Heinlein saw this in 1980. The title of Zeb Carter’s dissertation from ‘The Number of the Beast’ – An Ad-Hoc Inquiry Concerning the Optimization of the Infrastructure of Primary Educational Institutions at the Interface Between Administration and Instruction, with Special Attention to Group Dynamics Desiderata.

9. As to abortion, I always ask, “If viability is when a human being can live outside the womb, what do you do when humans can be raised to term in without the involvement of a woman at all, except perhaps for a genetic sample?” When exactly does a test tube baby become a baby?

   To my militant women friends, I always asked, “So in the bad old days, if a man got a woman pregnant, he was typically “forced” to marry her or at least run out of town. Maybe not the best outcome, but at least there were consequences for the man. Now he’s considered a prince if he drives you to the abortion clinic and pays for half the abortion. How is that a good deal for women?”

   You can tell I wasn’t invited to a lot of parties.

   1. My own Blast from The Past.

      “I wrote in Time Magazine about 20 years ago that it doesn’t matter whether a child is cloned or not. Once they’re born, a living and breathing baby, they’re human children and need all the love, compassion, attention, and care we as responsible parents can give them.

      Anywhere you run into genetic slavery, whether Jerry Pournelle’s Sauron Supermen to David Weber’s Mesans in his Honorverse, it’s just plain ugly. Of course we see that ugliness even in todays world when people treat other people as things or property.”

      I could add that babies need, “all the love, compassion, attention, and care we as responsible parents can give them” even before they’re born. The requirements for good pre-natal care to have good post-natal outcomes should pretty much put a stake through the heart of the abortion question. Just more cognitive dissonance from the medical community on this issue.

10. I’ve watched my Constitutional rights get stripped away during the past two years. Free speech cracked down upon by the government, compelled speech (the mask), freedom of association removed (all the lock downs, restrictions on gathering), government support of vaccine mandates, and at one point “quarantine” house arrest (in Santa Clara county) if I were to travel.

    These justices did nothing to stop it, or even supported it.

    I agree with overturning Roe, but since that is the only thing they are stunning and brave about, it seems like it’s more of a one-off Catholic thing instead of believing in the Constitution as written. I’ll take it, if they do it, but Roberts, Kav and Amy will return to being statists when it’s over, having gotten their lifetime seats due to embracing this one issue.

    1. Any government concerned about falling population levels, yet maintaining support for abortion, is too stupid to be allowed to survive.

       1. THIS

       2. The Reader hasn’t seen any of those governments concerned about falling population levels on Planet Earth. Which is why it is a problem.

          1. They are still trying to achieve the goals posted on the Georgia Guidestones.

             1. This is the truth. Their utopian fantasy is our dystopian nightmare.

11. This was the number one reason why the ‘liberal’ press spent four years incessantly screaming bloody murder about Orange Man Bad. Trump was going to appoint Supreme Court Justices who would overturn Roe. Now, even with him out of office, their worst nightmares are about to come true. I expect the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth as if from the very damned to be deafening.

12. I woke up with brown spotting today. Half my day has been spent praying desperately that my body won’t spontaneously abort one of those “meaningless clumps of cells” that even this Mississippi law being challenged would allow me to have murdered at my convenience.

    For the record, this is why I hate the phrase “choose life.” I can’t keep this baby from dying by anything I can do. It will happen or it won’t. I have no choice in the matter.

    1. Praying.
       If it helps, I had spotting (more than that, for the first six months) at the time of my period with second son all through the pregnancy.
       Why I didn’t know I was pregnant till six months in. I just thought “Light periods.”
       I had some with first son, too, but not as much.
       With me, it was always unsteady. And yep.

    2. Praying.

    3. Ditos to praying. Just said one to the apostle to the lost souls. Cosmic hugs Amy!

    4. Prayer flag raised.

    5. The Reader offers his prayers as well.

       1. And I’ve got you lifted up before the throne as well.

       2. I can and will raise it myself.

          (Doing OK with the nose; Doc says it’s likely due to CPAP drying and recommends Ayr gel and/or saline spray to avoid a recurrence.)

    6. Also praying. Normally I don’t hug strangers but it’s here if you want it. {{{hug}}}

    7. Prayers up for you.

       I too had spotting during some of my pregnancies. It is common but something to be attended to for sure.

       My aunt had a great devotion to St. Gerard.

       https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=150

       So I always ask his intercession for pregnant ladies.

    8. Thank you everyone for the prayers. The spotting seems to have gone away.

       After ten years of failing to conceive, only for this miracle pregnancy, it’s hard not to panic at the least sign of problems.

       1. (Imagine all of us standing beside you on a green, grassy hill in the sunshine.)

       2. I know. Every. Little. Hick up.

       3. Praying for you and your baby.

       4. Dear Amy, I have been there, and I’m praying for you and your baby. I pray that you have the same happy result that I did. Also, be aware that once you deliver your baby, your body knows what to do and you might end up with what my family calls Irish twins. Years of trying to conceive, and then bam, two babies in eighteen months. I never regretted a moment. Bless you and your little one.

          1. Congratulations on the Irish Twins. I wish. Wasn’t that lucky. Grateful for the one we do have …

             1. Judging from history (queens who had trouble getting pregnant) the chances of the first one “opening the gate” are about 50/50. Higher if you don’t try to space them, according to talks with medical pros. We alas, tried to space.

                1. We did not try to space. I haven’t taken, or used, any form of birth control since I was 22. I couldn’t take the pill. I have headaches without taking it. Pill made them worse. I am allergic to other barrier options. So, what will happen will happen, was the decision about 3 months after marriage. We didn’t worry for about two years. Then tried everything short of IVF or aggressive fertility drugs (because then doctors wouldn’t unless there was a “reason”, and “none found”) for the next 8. Heck, because both of older sisters had problems, the youngest of us didn’t take birth control ever. “What will happen will happen.” Her first first was born 11 months after they married (six weeks after our son … our folks went from 0 to 3 grandchildren in 8 months), second 3 years later, 3rd was harder.

                   Oh. I know about the flood gates. I’ve mentioned before that the middle sister, who adopted their first, had their first “miracle” three years after. Then was pregnant every 15 months, until their last. Only reason they didn’t have 6 kids is because they lost two between each successful live birth, spacing of all is 30 – 36 months. She had a diagnosis of why getting pregnant was impossible. Condition was still evident when she finally had to have the full hysterectomy. Thus the “miracle” designation. She could not have children by diagnosis.

    9. I had spotting too, and our son is 30.
       Meanwhile, I’ve added my prayers to the whole.

    10. I will pray for you and your baby.

    11. Praying.

        I know how hard this is. Doesn’t make what is happening easier. All I can do is add to the choirs of prayers.

    12. Will pray for the health and strength of your baby. Kyrie eleison. Christ have mercy,

    13. Amy, I am so, so sorry. I have been there; I am praying for you right now. You are loved more than you possibly could ever know – we who have walked this lonely path share a bond of sorrow. Please know that you are not alone… we walk through the Valley of the Heartache together, and God walks by our side.

    14. Prayers and wishes for a good outcome.

    15. Fingers crossed for you

    16. Vest of luck to you and the baby.

        1. Vest = Best, obviously. Damn it, I can’t type today.

           Yes, I wish your baby to not only be born alive but to somehow obtain a magic vest that will increase his luck stat. I hear they sell those at The Gap.

           1. The Baby Vest of Many Colors.

              1. Gives a bonus to luck, but penalizes charisma on account of you being dressed like a bag of skittles. 😛

    17. I’m sorry, Amy. I’m just glad it worked out and pray it continues.

13. Also praying, Amy.

    1. Praying. I had spotting.

14. Mid last century, when I was a dirty young man at University of Florida (Dirty old men aren’t born you know, we gotta work at it day after day after day after day!) I remember a young lady telling me she wasn’t worried about getting pregnant, her parents would send her to Cuba for an abortion.

    Thinking about her reminded me of a Cuban girl, very well to do family, I knew in high school in Miami, Emmalina Uriarte, beautiful articulate, extremely well read. I suspect she’d gone through and retained the whole Harvard Classics shelf and then some. Once I asked her where she found the time. Seemed her family wouldn’t let her date unless accompanied by a dueña so she read instead.

    Of the two I suspect, with all said and done, Emmalinia had, or has, the most fulfilling life.

    1. You should find a copy of Asimov’s, “The Sensuous Dirty Old Man.” It’s fun.
       From the book, never forgotten:
       “A newlywed couple named Kelly
       Spent their honeymoon belly to belly,
       Because in their haste, they used library paste,
       Instead of petroleum jelly.”

15. Some day I’ll be able to talk about this issue without dissolving into a weeping pile of misery.
    But not today.
    Know that the ready availability of abortions and the cultural push to use abortion as contraception has devastating consequences that never entirely go away.

    1. I’m so sorry Kathy, God loves us all, and none of us are worthy. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1l3Igc34cKf5Q9BGHULIavwwLXPF2lqwc/view?usp=sharing. Cosmic hugs.

       1. Thanks so much!
          Tough topic.

          1. Hugs.

             1. Feels good, thanks. 🙂

          2. Another hug.

             1. 😊

    2. Hugs.

       1. ☺️

    3. You are loved. Know this.

       1. Thank you.

    4. A lot of what they sell us on leaves wounds that won’t heal this side of Heaven.God grant you comfort and strength until that bright day.

       1. Thanks Overgrown.

16. I read a very interesting article from one of the “converted”—a woman who had pushed for legal abortion and celebrated Roe v. Wade, but who came to have doubts on the subject.

    The interesting part about the article was that her conversion was not in the least bit based on the sanctity of life. It was, instead, based on the concept of widely available abortion as a “funnel.” As in, Oh, you’re a pregnant teen? Get an abortion, problem solved. Oh, a baby will interfere with your job? Get an abortion, problem solved.

    To her mind, instead of solving problems (like why is the teen pregnant, or why is a baby a barrier to a job), people funneled all of these pregnant ladies into a giant funnel named “Abortion.” She also didn’t appreciate the feature-creep of trying to use abortion as a “solution” to more and more things, or the fact that if you expressed mild doubts, you were vilified.

    And I think that’s an important conversation to have, if you want to change minds. The hardest part about reducing abortions is reducing the need for them—because in so many cases, those aren’t “needs” so much as they are problems that need to have more than one big funnel of a solution that is addressing the wrong problem.

    1. I’m not to the point of banning abortion or punishing a woman for getting one. I think it’s a waste of opportunity and life; but there are hard choices to make in very little time, and getting an abortion is probably too easy to do rather than have the mother (Birthing person? Bah!) to consider all her other options.

       1. “Birthing person” is suspended for the duration of the usefulness of “women” to the left.

          Once women are no longer useful, “birthing person” will return.

    2. This is why Bill Clinton claimed to want to make abortion “Safe, legal, and rare.”. It’s doubtful that he actually meant it, but it wasn’t that hard to believe at the time. Nowadays the madcap craziness of the part of the left that practically considers an abortion to be a rite of adulthood (and one to be repeated as often as possible) is getting louder and louder. People who pay attention know that any politician on the left pushing “Safe, legal, and rare,” probably doesn’t really mean it.

       1. As opposed to Obama who didn’t want his daughters punished by having a child.

       2. It was perfectly impossible to believe at the time. As soon as I heard that he had said it, I answered (to myself, alas, for no one else was there to listen): ‘If it’s safe and legal, why on earth would it be rare?’

          1. “If it’s safe and legal, why on earth would it be rare?”

             Exactly. People make changes assuming everything stays the same except now desperate women no longer die in backstreet abortions.

             Nope. What happens is a lot more promiscuity because there’s a ‘safe and legal’ fix if she gets pregnant. Women take risks they wouldn’t have, decent men come to think premarital sex is part of figuring out who you want to commit to, and now women still die from legal abortions done in legal but unsafe conditions, women who wouldn’t have gotten pregnant before in the first place.

       3. And apparently the latest “protest tactic” is making an appointment to be “sterilized”……

          To which the only response is to point out that when the food shortages / nukes / etc. the FICUS and his crew impose hit, don’t be too surprised if the new mantra is “Can’t breed, don’t feed.” Survival has its’ own rules.

          smh

    3. Somewhat related:

       In school, I was that square who argued against abortion.
       The gal that I most often argued against is now anti-abortion, on entirely utilitarian grounds– she found that there were literal ads begging to adopt children, even “defective” ones, and they’d support the mother to viability if needed.
       Thus, there are no unwanted children.
       Thus, there should be no abortions.

       1. After so long of being barren, the best way I could explain my feelings toward abortion was to reference the scene in the second Hunger Games movie, where the male lead discovers to his horror and disgust that while people in the provinces are starving, the Capitolites are inducing vomiting so they can eat more.

          There is truly no such thing as an unwanted baby, just babies unwanted by their genetic donors. Current estimates are that for every infant put up for adoption, there are 36 couples competing to be that child’s parents.

          1. The de-facto ban on interracial adoptions is, in my opinion, a large part of the problem. “You can’t adopt a child who looks different. You can’t adopt a child from an enrolled tribe, because the tribe may reclaim the child at any point. Children don’t need love, they need a parent who looks just like them.” Blargh.

             1. Happens anyway, mostly from religious or foreign adoption agencies. There are a lot of white families raising kids of other races; and it does not even raise an eyebrow anymore, in this neck of the woods.

                1. Duck Dynasty’s youngest brother and his wife adopted Augustus “Gus” Robertson, who is black.

                   1. The DD cancellation always made me cycle between confusion and rage.

                      Does anyone remember the statements that caused the shrieking?

                      “The Bible says a man should not lay with another man.”

                      It does. It says that. He never said every human being should live their lives by that, it was just his religious point of view.

                      Also, he said he found a woman’s vagina more sexually attractive than a man’s anus.

                      Pretty sure that one was true, too. His sexual choice.

                      But nope, redneck hatemongers.

                      1. I never watched the show until it was in reruns. I’d never laughed so hard as the day of the lawnmower race. Good night.

                         The Robertsons are prospering with many podcasts, shows, and witness. In the end, they not only survived, but thrived.

             2. And the hillarious part is, those people screaming the loudest against interracial adoptions are also the ones screaming the loudest for inclusion, equity, and how we’re all the same. Of course, you can’t have diversity if we’re all the same, and when races are blended even more than they are now, we’ll all be a homogenized mess. Not that we aren’t largely a homogenized mess already. 🙂

                1. THIS.

                2. also, my family is my family and calling them an homogenized mess is unkind.

             3. The tribal ones get me. A lot of these “Native American rights” groups seem to believe that it’s better for a child to be beaten and raped with “parents” of their tribe than be given a loving, safe home outside of it.

                A family member adopted a little girl who was part Native American. In theory, the tribe signed off on it, but as you say, they can change their minds at pretty much any time. I really hope that they have forgotten the girl exists at this point.

                1. Similar in Canada. The Indian Act is a vile piece of legislation that needs to die.

                2. The tribal ones get me. A lot of these “Native American rights” groups seem to believe that it’s better for a child to be beaten and raped with “parents” of their tribe than be given a loving, safe home outside of it.

                   Since they also hold that someone who gets an actual job, moves off the reservation, and manages to not kill themselves or anyone else is not a “real” Indian while the folks who stay on the rez and hopefully die before they kill someone else is wonderful, this is sadly not surprising.

                   signed, someone who had to bury too many cousins, and watch those who became functional adults get abused by psychotic Professional Indians.

                   1. The last direct-line blood relative killed himself in a single person accident, three years ago now.

                      The self-rescuing-prince of a brother was, last I knew, being as awesome as I could hope and chatting up random tourists that were in line at the ATM. (He ran into a neighbor when he was depositing his paycheck. Neighbor was ours, from three states away….)

    4. Very similar to reproductive health care for females.

       Problems with your period? You should get on the Pill!

       No problems? You should get on the Pill!

       A lot of health problems are ignored in favor of tinkering with dosage, when it is often something internally dangerous or painful, or with broad consequences to other parts of health.

       Whereas if you never get birth control and go to a gynecologist who expects that, he/she actually treats your symptoms, like other kinds of doctors do.

       (Obviously not all ob-gyns, but there are Big Pharma/HMO incentives for bad ob-gyns.)

       1. THIS.

       2. Heh. I should have scrolled down farther.

    5. They do the same thing with anything related to “women’s reproductive care”.

       Heavy period? Hormonal birth control
       Debilitating cramps? Hormonal birth control
       Wild mood swings? Hormonal birth control

       Never “let’s get a baseline and see if anything odd pops out”

       1. /laugh
          They must have done that with my mother, because I’m the odd one that popped out!

17. Way back in the 1780s, James Madison write in Federalist 10 that the only cures for inequality were far, far worse than the disease. Since inequality, and the problems of groups forming that would be bad for society in general and other groups in particular, would be around as long as people were people, Madison proposed a solution. Have a system that allowed so many groups that they diluted each other out. And have the system designed so that the passions of the crowd could be tempered and cooled in a legal and workable manner.

18. I figured out a long time ago, that the left’s sexual revolution is primarily about pressuring women into being cheap whores for vile men.

    It’s just more Orwellian language.

    Note: the UN has now become concerned about the poor little women ( and a few men) being oppressed by staying home to homeschool instead of being liberated to work as tax slaves. Oh the horror of women ( and a few men) not generating taxable income, and extra horror, spending quality time with their kids so they might think independently of state propaganda!

    1. And cheap whores for successful men it seems like.

       The average guy isn’t getting much more now than he was when I was in HS/College best I can tell, if that much, but the average women is. Tells me the Pareto Principle applies to check sex as much as anything else.

    2. yes

19. Something to consider is the health of pregnant women.

    The most common cause of death for pregnant women is homicide. (20, roughly%)

    Has been for years.

    Most common motive in the solved cases?

    She didn’t kill the kid.

    But those dead women don’t matter, to the activists. Same as the women maimed or killed by Tiller didn’t matter, but him being shot was horrible.

    It’s almost like they don’t actually care about women at all.
    :STARES TOWARDS FORMER PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    1. I am agog at that information.
       And completely unsurprised.

    2. Actually, I’ve seen multiple Tweets today using those women’s deaths to justify keeping abortion legal…if they can abort they won’t be murdered for cheating/being pregnant/whatever.

       1. Brought to you by the same sort of folks who think a woman raped and strangled to death in an alley is a better outcome than a woman shooting and killing her attacker, because Gun Violence Bad.

          It’s almost as if the only consistent theme in their “defense” of women is that they want to freely use and abuse them.

       2. Certain men will murder women who get pregnant. Therefore, pregnant women should cater to those men by murdering their own unborn babies.

          Makes perfect sense…if you’re in an evil death cult.

       3. /facepalm

    3. You said “for years”. Does that mean it was different in the past? I would guess that contraception and the widespread availability of abortion would have increased the rate of murder of pregnant women for not killing their child. Because contraception establishes the expectation that the reproductive act should not lead to babies, and abortion provides the “safe and legal” option to kill the kid.

       1. You said “for years”. Does that mean it was different in the past?

          Part of the calculation problem is that pregnancy related causes use to be a significant cause of death in pregnant women, and that was dropping like a rock when female contraception and then abortion became legally available.

          But yes, there is evidence that failure-to-get-an-abortion-when-expected-to is strongly correlated with risk of death by child’s father.

20. My opinion on abortion has always been: It’s killing a person. That’s not necessarily bad. There are all sorts of legitimate reasons to kill a person. Make your case.

    It’s the denial of personhood that has always bothered me.

    On the flip side, I don’t understand why one cannot contract a hit on one’s self (let’s go with blockchain so we don’t have to worry about fraudulent contracts; the world really needs a sarcasm font) or why suicide is illegal. If you want to go that badly, OK, bye.

    1. Hmmm. I guess I support abortion in specific instances, like to prevent mass murders:
       Hitler
       Pol Pot
       Mussolini
       Sanger
       …

21. Dan could have spent more time working at his career, gone into management and climbed that ladder. Alternately, he could spend more time with us and choose to stagnate at a comfortable-ish career level, but get to see his kids grow up and have time with me.

    Wait, you mean the “mommy track” wasn’t some grand misogynist plot against women but more the “I want an actual life track” that men got shuffled onto if they weren’t willing to work 80 hours a week the same as women?

    1. “I want an actual life track”

       –
       The
       “What do you mean you want to coach your kid’s kidsports team?”
       “What do you mean you are going camping with your child and wife this weekend?”
       “What do you mean you have a teacher/parent conference your wife expects you to be at?”
       ….

       100%

       Hubby never did have a career track that the above mattered. Plus TPTB at his company were thrilled they had an employee who would take the non-over-time jobs without complaint. His compensation was union negotiated.

       Me? Never worked a job where a career track up the ladder was possible. But did it ever affect raises. Where the only negative they could offer was working only 40 hours/week. Not true, because of the tendency to “almost got it” syndrome. But definitely wasn’t regularly, and was a fan of comp time. Oops one day. Come in late or leave early another on comp time. Have to leave early because kid needed something, make it up staying late another day. But never quite used up all the comp time accumulated.

22. So if abortion really leads to handmaid’s tale type scenarios (How only insane people can know) there will be an exodus from red states to blue states.

    By definition, abortion cannot lead to Handmaid’s Tale type scenarios.

    Why?

    To be a Handmaid one must be of proven fertility by bringing a child to term, but having done it outside of marriage (and according to the appendix in later periods of the Gillad rule, outside of marriage sanctioned by the official church, implying in the era of Offred’s indoctrination other marriages were recognized). In fact, I often have to bite my tongue when I see the cosplayers and ask where their out of wedlock child that makes them eligible is (I doubt most have them, thus the reason I see being a Handmaid as a sexual fantasy/fetish, not a protest on their part).

    Then again, I read their damn “Bible” more closely than they did (if they read it at all) to the point of having mildly defended the book as a book here.

    1. Never watched it. Never read the source book. No desire to do so.

       1. Read it back in the early 90s before it was “required”. I thought the idea was interesting.

          As I have said often, it is full of interesting ideas but Atwood doesn’t follow-up on any of them in depth.

       2. It’s a slog. Atwood is basically your average Canadian academic type. Boringly leftist, paranoid about anything “American”, and praised to the skies by the local literati, making her a moderate sized fish in a VERY small pond.

          1. Her other accomplishment is that she has also written a completely unreadable science fiction series. I really tried to read one of the books but it was the worst writing I’ve ever seen.

             1. It was moderately readable, but I have yet to reread it.

23. When I was in Jr high I had a friend casually tell me something very weird that made no sense at al. For some reason, even though she was quite casual about it, it made me very queasy every time I thought about what she said. It wasn’t until I was in my 30s and I remembered it after many years of not thinking about it that a lightning bolt struck me and I realized she was describing abuse by her male relatives.

    Thank you , Lord for my innocent upbringing.

    1. A friend in the SCA was an only child and her parents decided to foster to give her “siblings.” The stories they got from those children were awful. The one that sticks with me was the evening the 3-year-old girl announced, quite calmly at the dinner table, “My daddy f*ked me,” as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
       She said even the pair of boys from “reform school,” blanched are that one and everyone suddenly lost their appetite.

       1. It took me a long time to understand that my family wasn’t “normal” and neither was the abuse the my siblings and myself endured.

          I was saved by extended family, but to say I hate Epstein, Brandon and their ilk with the rage of a thousand super novas is an understatement. And abortion is the ultimate child abuse.

          1. Big hug. I’m sorry.

24. Or take abortion. Personally I don’t expect the SC to overthrow Roe. If they were going to, this leak and the riots that will follow — on command as usual — will scare the arrant cowards among them.

    If that is what happens, it is actually worse. It’s another nail into the coffin of anything but raw power is useless. We saw an expression of how the non-left is going to react to that on Jan. 6, 2021 and the left thought it was an insurrection (despite being much less destructive than peaceful protests). However, the Congresscritters did learn one thing: if the protesters had wanted them dead, the Capitol Police could not have stopped them (one way you know the insurrection piece if bs).

    If the threat of mob violence at a leaked draft can change SCUS votes, then lots of people will realize mob violence is the only lever of power left to anyone. The Left seems to think that would be just awesome, but like Moldlylocks I think they haven’t realized “Nazis” get to punch back.

    1. Moldlylocks

       I forgot about that….

       happy thoughts

       1. Rarely have so many people gotten to watch someone get exactly what he/she/it deserved. beatific kitty smile “And that’s why you don’t do that.”

25. That classmate of yours is sticking with me hard. Whole glob of concepts I can’t unstick from each other to examine yet, but…

    But of course you all thought she was glamorous and adult. Small things want to grow, young things want to be adults. And to get the… the shell of glamor, and being “respected” by your elders, and… all of it, but without the first scent of duty anyone owes a growing child…

    No, the fact that you envied her is part of the evil. God help everyone involved >.<

    1. Here is another piece for the glob: “glamor” used to mean a spell of fake pleasant-image, it is still used that way in RPGs.

       Hollywood runs entirely on glamor, but the definition is forgotten.

       1. Because it meant magic, because it meant book learning, because it meant grammar.

26. As an aside to the SC leak, today I deleted my NaNoWriMo membership. The decided it was vital for the NaNoWriMo official org to release a statement on the importance of abortion rights:

    4/ Our organization is in solidarity with those who will experience the most harm from this ruling: Black and brown working-class people with uteruses and their families. Regarding actions to take today, we encourage the following [next thread]:

    — NaNoWriMo (@NaNoWriMo) May 4, 2022

    I also found they have a DIE link on their website now (it is “Our Values(DEI)”).

    What does abortion, or DIE for that matter, have to do with their purpose as stated on the front page of their website.

    NaNoWriMo is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides tools, structure, community, and encouragement to help people find their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds — on and off the page.

    Sad as it is, but the official org is now just another skinsuit to advance leftism.

    1. I got that e-mail too. My first reaction was “What the heck does this have to do with encouraging authors?” Add that to the push for writers-of-color and writers-from-underserved-communities, and yes. Enough is enough.

       1. Obviously, NaNoWriMo is now gatekeeping out future authors, by killing them.

          To the tune of Dead Puppies, of course!

          Your baby died before November
          One less author to dismember.
          Dead babies can’t write books.

          Too many authors are PoC
          You should make them never be
          Dead babies can’t write books.

          Up… Amazon’s bestsellers…
          I will climb…
          One… author dead and buried…
          At a time…
          Dead babies can’t write books!
          No no no!

          No novels by dead babies,
          Black or brown,
          Dead minority babies,
          Keep ’em down,
          Dead babies can’t write books!

       2. Same reason I let my RWA membership expire years ago.

          When I got an email about how they were going to put race above everything else because of discrimination in romance writing, when most successful male romance writers have to use female pennames (the opposite would be a scandal in SFF or mystery) I knew the org wasn’t about encouraging writers, but white people signaling “eat me last” to non-white people they think are savages.

          1. You could always be like many modern college applicants and falsely claim your pigment privileges. Yes, you too can be a “ghost white” writer!

             First step: Claim your authentic name, Tyrone Alveras
             Second step: Run your manuscript through OpenAI’s GPT-3 to pick up the desired heritage and slang
             Third step: ?
             Fourth step: Profit!

       3. To say nothing of their support for BLM.

          I used to enjoy NaNo. I had to miss one year because of exhaustion due to Family Drama and death cleanup… and in the interim NaNo went insane. Don’t think I’m going back, drat.

          1. At this point, there’s really no purpose to the organization. They re-did the forums to make them pretty much unusuable, and to insure that, if you read someone’s comment and were interested in what they were writing, there was no way to look back at their original NaNo account and see the data on their novel. They got rid of the “cabins” for Camp NaNo, so you don’t get the little support group and chat. Since COVID, they’ve completely eliminated in-person writing groups, on pain of being thrown out of the organization, so you can’t even use them to meet other writers in your area.

             Basically, at this point they’re a word counter, and not a particularly good one. 10 minutes and an spreadsheet could give me a better one.

             I’ll keep doing NaNo, the “I write 50K words in November” thing, but I think the only reason to log into the website is to pull off things I’ve already put on there.

             1. The group in my area kept meeting at Panera Bread, so I couldn’t ever go anyway. Inhaled flour = very bad!

          2. If you’re on MeWe, I know there’s a year-round NoWi group– and if you’re not, MeWe allows pseudonyms.

             Obviously, not going to post here, but you know my email and I know unmasked folks who can get you an invite. 😀

          3. I never NaNo’ed as part of the organization.

    2. Solidifying that they have no more of an adult sense of responsibility than the original founders that chose the month of Thanksgiving for their “write every single day” month?

       Great if you’re a college kid. Heck, during that last week, you may not even have to cook….

       1. In fairness to the founders, November happened because he’d just been laid off and it was the next full month.

          1. While more sympathetic than college kids, not making the responsible case….

             1. He also wasn’t expecting it to go much past his circle of friends and was rather surprised when it did. Then was surprised at how MANY people signed on (to the tune of annual crashes of the server when they consistently got twice as many folk in November as expected.)

                1. It’s fun.

                   Even a grumpy Martha like me notices that.

                   I can even make a case that it’s good for the folks who need more adult responsibility training, exactly because kids who have the mental format of “I am on break, I don’t HAVE to do ANYTHING but eat the food set before me” will either fail their NaNo wordcount, or they will be putting seat to seat and words to screen.

                   That’s part of why the shifting to abusive scold focused nonsense is so disappointing.

                   1. Very much. They’re a lot less fun than they were, which is sad. (’03 was my first so I was there for the change but couldn’t really do much about it as just a participant.) Oddly I think the ‘less fun’ came about through the ‘you don’t really HAVE to do the original challenge… you can do whatever’ And things went down hill from there. They lost focus and other things crept in.

                      Still, on the point of having it in November. By the time it got big enough for them to go ‘um… this might not be the best month for a lot of folk…” It was pretty solidified in people’s minds as a November thing. (There were discussions of moving it to April, which was the origin of Camp Nano.)

    3. First order of business when I get home: delete my membership in that now noxious organization and tell them why. Haven’t really been paying attention to them since their virtue signaling freakout over Trump’s so-called Muslim ban, but it’s past time I cut that cord entirely.

       1. I missed that.

          Larry just linked this on Twitter earlier (which apparently is when he learned NaNoWriMo was an org and not just a tradition).

          1. From what people have copy/pasted of this email, it seems like a carbon copy of the 2016 one. Same framing, just [insert NPC script: current year].

             1. You’d think a writing org could at least write something more creative and something new each time.

                More proof they are converged to value progtardness over their mission.

    4. “Black and brown working-class people with uteruses…”

       One uterus, many… uteri?

       But also, for F- sake, circumlocution much?

       1. There’s a Calvin & Hobbes strip where he says, “Verbing words weirds language.” In terms of weirding language, compared to how leftists will tie their tongues into pretzels* to avoid saying “women”, Calvin was a piker.

          * Oh noes! Cultural appropriation! Except Germans are white Europeans, so no leftist is going to complain about it, racists that they are.

    5. And they do not allow replies.

    6. NANOWRIMO has been woke for a long time.

27. I asked my son in college if the potential overturn of Roe is causing waves among his classmates. He reports it’s not a big deal. Then again, he’s male, and his red state college is not liberal.

    But, I do wonder. At this point, it’s quite clear that birth control works very well. I knew of a number of girls in high school or college who had children out of wedlock 40 years ago; I can think of only two among my kids’ peers, and both of those girls had finished high school, at least. Which is to say, how many young women have a realistic chance of getting pregnant? None, at least if they use birth control–which the Democrats have been pushing into sex ed classes.

    So to wail that your daughters need abortion to be ready is to admit that they’re too stupid to figure out birth control. So this is a social status/perceived virtue thing for the women who are pretending to advocate for their daughters’ right to abort their grandchildren.

    And then again, the average age of the population is around 38 (lower in red states.) So the majority of voters are over the age of childbearing.

    Some 13% of women seek treatment for infertility. Some 20% of millennials claim to be LGBTQ(etc) on surveys. Some claim to be asexual. Quite a few are too busy to date. And then there are women who do want to have children before they turn 40. There are many families who are desperate to adopt babies. So…by my reckoning, there aren’t huge numbers of women who are in desperate need of an abortion.

    1. None, at least if they use birth control–which the Democrats have been pushing into sex ed classes.

       Other way around, actually. There’s an established correlation between great promotion of birth control, especially in schools, and a higher rate of unplanned pregnancies in school girls.

       Nobody listens to the failure rate for perfect use, much less standard use– and if the girls have access to birth control, they lose that card for saying “no” without hurting the guy’s feelings.

28. “Working class people with uteruses and their families.” Women? Mothers? Nothing says respecting people like describing them by their internal organs only. I’m a person with a pancreas! How are you, person with a gall bladder?

    1. Guess they hadn’t got the “women are now distinguishable without a biology degree” memo.

    2. That’s dehumanizing to those that had to have theirs removed

29. “If someone can’t get an abortion in a red state, she can go to a blue state. Look, greyhound buses aren’t that expensive, and people can form charities to pay for it, right? If they believe that much.”

    The Canadian Federal Minister of Health said American birthing people can all come up here and murder their offspring in our beautiful socialist hospitals. In beautiful British Columbia, the ‘results,’ or ‘leftovers’ if you will, shall be collected with the rest of the medical waste and sent off to generate lovely renewable electricity in a handy incinerator station.

    Yes. That is the real plan. I don’t talk about the issue much, but I must admit that the ‘burned for electricity’ thing pissed me off.

    1. It’s a vital part of the tactics; one of the things that is done here in America is that the dead preborn humans are allowed to be taken for burial.

    2. There are teachings about human dignity, pretty important to certain religions.

       They are hostile to those religions, therefore, refusing human dignity is a tool for them.

       Plus, it makes the opposition’s divide and rule tactic a little more viable. STamp on human dignity, and people kind of know, even if they are not paying close attention to the specifics. More human dignity is stamped on, the more it seems a little plausible that “If you don’t let me help you, they will destroy you”.

    3. Meanwhile Canadians who want cancer treatments come to us, because where he offers death, we offer life.

       1. I work in the Canadian healthcare system.

          Do. Not. Get. Me. Started.

          ________________________________

          1. I actually had to test a state implementation of Obamacare exchanges. I feel your pain.

          2. Oooo. A guest post, for Sarah? 🙂 Under “Shall Not Be Named”. Just saying.

             1. THis.

             2. Wouldn’t know where to start, I’m afraid.

          3. Wise. You would set off others on the topic, too.

    4. Moloch always demands burnt offerings. The children have to pass through fire.

       1. But do we REALLY want to make that one stronger?

          1. Well, the elites have been sacrificing to Cybele for a long time. What is trans after all but the Galli updated,

             We seem to be determined to bring the old gods back with fire and slaughter. Damned fools.

             I

             1. yes. That had occurred to me.

             2. I’d be tempted to let them discover what their ancestors bribed the gods to leave them ALONE. But I don’t want to be within the blast radius (and the way things work too many would be.)

30. Some things work better than others…

    Man attempts rob a concealed carry class, gets shot by everyone pic.twitter.com/us6G22Cirp

    — Hans Bürger (@oomfieburger) May 2, 2022

    1. LOL! I had almost forgotten about that incident. It does the heart good to see it again.

    2. Now that’s gun control! They hit the target, and the taxpayers are spared the expense of imprisonment and a trial.
       ———————————
       The Democrats trust violent criminals and terrorists with guns more than they trust you.

    3. He reminds me of the guy who decided to rob a local donut hut when there were at least six city cops, highway patrol, and sheriff’s deputies in the place. And the clerk pointed this fact out to the robber. Nope, he demanded the till. So the guys followed him out into the parking lot and that was that.

       1. Or the one Neal Boortz brought up years ago, where some SuperGenius in a Chicago suburb decided to stick up a bar that was hosting the retirement party for a couple of cops….. ignoring the sign on the marquee and half a dozen marked cars in the parking lot.

          Yeah, that worked out well….. 😉

          1. Stupid is as stupid does…

       2. Heh. There was a scene like that in Robocop 3, although the perp there at east had the sense to surrender:

    4. …this is why you do pre-op recon.
       This is why you do pre-op recon.
       This is why you do pre-op recon.

       I hate having good people traumatized by other people’s stupid.

    5. Instant karma. 🙂

    6. I saw that, although the version I saw didn’t say how the cop who got stabbed faired.

31. Living life on planet Earth these days has this feeling of atomization. Everyone is being reduced to particles of dust by the dystopians. Dystopians, that is, those people who seek to obliterate our humanity and make us into lifeless, indiscernible clumps of non playable characters (NPCs). The stream of life is precious, no one is an accident of nature.

32. Sarah, were you still looking for onion sets? They had some leftovers at work.

33. In an unrelated note, life is good. God-willing, I’m about a month short of getting my 5-year “Cancer Survivor” certificate from MD Anderson.

    Had a rare and aggressive cancer and God in His mercy sent me to the right doctors, not someone who would just say “Yeah, some people get that,” when I described my symptoms…

    I hope all of you are enjoying life as much as I do!!!1!!1!!!eleventy!!!

    1. That’s a huge milestone, congratulations!

34. Simple minds crave simple answers, especially when there ARE no simple answers.

    And our government schools crank out simple minds in job lots.

    They get all confused and worked up about everything they don’t understand, and they’ve never been taught to understand anything. They’ve been taught NOT to understand.
    ———————————
    Complex questions don’t have simple answers. Hell, most simple questions don’t have simple answers.

35. At this point, all I know is this.

    The check for some very weak and poorly done case law in Roe V Wade has been put off, put off, put off…and now, it’s come due. With a vengeance.

    In the last fifty years, all of these people crying out that this is terrible…what have they done to try and convince people to get away from this weak case law and find something that is better? Answer, nothing. Because they want the fear and terror they’ve created for this weak-ass case law had funded their causes, paid for their kid’s college educations, paid off the mortgages on their houses, and in general has been nothing more than a way to raise money by pretending to be virtuous. It’s almost as hypocritical as the pastors at the various mega-churches out there.

    Nobody has been really making any efforts to improve contraception beyond The Pill and a few variations on the theme.

    Nobody has been trying to figure out how to reduce the number of abortions and thinking outside of the boxes.

    And, we’re all going to have to pay-in blood-for the failure of these people’s imaginations.

    1. Nobody has been really making any efforts to improve contraception beyond The Pill and a few variations on the theme.
       Nobody has been trying to figure out how to reduce the number of abortions and thinking outside of the boxes.

       Not true.
       For starters, the folks who opposed normalizing contraception predicted that abortion on demand would follow, and that both would result in more unwanted pregnancies, and thus more abortions.

       It’s basic human nature.

       Those who are told that they should expect to be able to engage in the reproductive act without chance of reproduction feel cheated when the reproductive act is successful, and thus feel entitled to removing the result of their act.

       Even when the failure rate for both perfect and normal use is right there.

       Beyond identifying and attempting to correct that mindset, those who oppose killing those humans deemed inconvenient have worked quite hard to reduce the number of abortions, from a variety of vectors– from supporting the abandoned women to offering to adopt children, even physically imperfect children, to trying to inform people.

       There is a reason that the pro-abortion groups have fought so hard to destroy pregnancy centers and any other resource that might make those women, and girls, who are scared and alone– know they can have help. Know that they are NOT alone, and that they DO NOT HAVE TO DO THIS.

       1. Those opposing artificial birth control have, incidentally, done quite a lot for researching reproductive systems of both men and women; many users of Natural Family Planning aren’t even religious, they just don’t want to hit their hormonal system with a sledgehammer as a matter of course, or have sex with plastic, even if someone is inside the plastic.

          This different focus means that someone is actually researching the health problems people have, instead of throwing drugs and IVF– or surrogacy– at it.

       2. At this point, I’m holding everybody responsible for this mess, on both sides of the line.

          Mostly because I’m the person that’s got to clean this whole mess up and that means I’ve got to break out the push broom, the bleach, and the flat-bladed shovel.

          I’m willing to agree that there is increasing and decreasing levels of responsibility and guilt. But, I’m too busy to do anything other than the most straightforward fix.

          1. At this point, I’m holding everybody responsible for this mess, on both sides of the line.

             That is an utterly childish response having to grow up and join in the effort with the people who said, “don’t do this, it will be a disaster,” who tried to keep the disaster as small as possible, and who have been working on cleaning up for decades at this point.

             All you did was regurgitate the selfish falsehood that the folks making the mess have been throwing at anybody who didn’t tell them what they wanted to hear, but instead of sticking with the old “only caring about born children” you decided to turn the knob up a level and accuse them of having done nothing.

             You’ve got to clean up the mess, breaking out the shovel, bleach and broom? Welcome to the party, pal!

             1. Eh, I think the pro-life side does share a bit of the blame for the societal mess that we’re in now. (Not the birth control stuff; what rock do you have to be under to think women are stuck with only the same Pill that existed 50 years ago?)

                Rather, a huge aspect of the pro-life movement has been the normalization of bastardy on the grounds that “at least she didn’t have an abortion.” Forty percent of all children are now born to unmarried parents. Two in every five. Millions of pro-life parents looked at their pregnant daughters and decided that unwed motherhood was a better option for her than both an abortion and a shotgun wedding.

                I’m not saying abortion is better than bastardy, but I am saying that by removing the stigma of bastardy in order to prevent abortions, society has fundamentally changed. Given all the negative externalities of single parenthood — the high risks of poverty, crime, abuse, and continuing the cycle of single parenthood — this has to be treated as a serious consequence of tradeoff. There are no solutions, only tradeoffs of course, but honest people have an obligation to acknowledge both sides of the scales.

                1. A shotgun wedding? With what social pressure?
                   Single-party divorce was already normalized– that was part of why there was a “need” for divorce. Because even a married woman might find herself dumped without warning or recourse, though she might get some money.

                   The only target left to punish for bastardry is the child himself, and that’s unjust.

                   1. I would argue that all the support and encouragement for single motherhood by government in concrete, economic form is of greater weight than anything the pro life side has done to support bastardy.

                      1. Quite true, especially if we include the relatively recent (late 90s, IIRC) attack on the ability of abandoned mothers to give up the children for adoption, in the name of “Father’s Rights.”

                      2. Because there’s no such thing as pro-life and big government compassionate conservatives?

                         1. Those who are big government types may hold other positions. They may even have strong conviction in those other positions. But the big government angle, the control, the power, and the corruption- that is always going to be the bigger issue.

                            I don’t particularly care if my neighbor has naked orgies in the privacy of his own home. Or prays to the spaghetti monster in the sky. Or whatever else. It is when he tries to force his beliefs on me that it matters.

                            Thus, the big government angle is what I focus on. Pro life people are not big enough in big government to have the control they would need to… Let me think here… Make it illegal to murder your own child in the womb?

                            That’s basically the essence of Pro Life to me. Don’t murder infants. If something threatens the health of the mother, you try to save the child, too. Outside of an extremely few and narrow circumstances (fractions of a percent. Small fractions thereof.), you always try to save the child as well as the mother.

                            It isn’t “at least she didn’t have an abortion,” to me. It is that THE CHILD GETS TO LIVE. I will protect and defend innocent life to my dying breath.

                            Full disclosure, my own godson was abandoned by his father. Technically born a bastard. He is loved and cared for and not a burden on anyone but a joy and a delight.

                            I get that there are issues with single parenthood. The statistics are available to anyone with the ability to read and an internet connection. I do not ascribe to the belief that Pro Life sentiment drives bastardy, higher crime rates, poverty, and abuse in a direct causal fashion.

                            There are issues with the culture that factor in to that. There is the direct support of the government that factors in to that (and the vast majority of those involved are pro abortion rather than the opposite, in my experience). Where the child is born matters. The parent’s support structure matters. There is so much more there than Pro-Life shares the blame, too.

                            I would need to see clear and unequivocal evidence that Pro Life goons are causing the problems that come with bastardy. To date, I do not and have not. Those problems have many fathers, and most (if not all) of them are rooted in things that have nothing to do with the Pro Life movement.

                      3. THIS. Plus again, do you know how hard adoption is?
                         We couldn’t withstand it. It meant having LEFTISTS crawling over our lives for years. (Most social workers are hard left.)

                         1. Sister adopted, early ’89. The process was intense and expensive. It was a private, semi-open adoption. Birth mother did not meet with the child, until child contacted after turning 18. The Open Adoption group was the one who did the home visits, but niece did not come through their group.

                            Not that Open Adoption meant fully Open … That was negotiated by the two parties. One example given was an older mother-to-be only asking that her, already grown children, and her elderly mother, be allowed to see the child grow up; another grandmother and uncles. She also took up residency in the state, until the birth, because, at that time anyway, the presumed father, named or not, had no rights without being married to the mother.

                            We had an application filled out and ready to turn in, then didn’t, when we discovered I was pregnant, and stayed pregnant. But we also delayed because, even then, the process was extremely invasive and we are extremely private.

                            I know of three other couples who have adopted.

                            1 – Aunt and Uncle. Foster child. Cousin is doing great despite all his medical issues. Has wife and 3 children. Aunt and Uncle also understand the intrusive nature of the process. Their biological youngest was very physically handicapped. They were used to fighting, keeping her alive from birth to death at age 13.
                            2 – Co-worker, two infants through a state child welfare agency, early ’90s. Both children have (it has been a couple of decades) extreme disabilities (to the point where they both have life time government health care regardless of what parents income was). If I thought sister’s adoption was expensive, each of their adoptions were OMG, what the heck?
                            3 – A friend of our child’s parents, another foster adopt. Semi-open adoption, in that the child is being kept in contact with half-sister who is now with her biological father who had no idea she existed. Foster parents were going to adopt both, until the father was found. Father of their adopted child was found too, but that father waived rights. The other father they have a good relationship with, and both children are thriving. FYI. Regarding adoption process intrusion? The foster mom ran an in home daycare for decades, so knew the process.

                2. Yeah, but part of the problem is with our adoption/social services mechanisms, which need to be killed with fire, so….

    2. ?

       I’m not really sure what more you expect. There are a number of varieties of birth control that have emerged over the last few decades. The less common ones typically have well-understood issues associated with them. The pill appears to have less well-understood issues associated with it… Probably the only one without some sort of health risk is the old-fashioned disposable male contraceptive that’s been around for a very, very long time.

       Conservative states have been testing the waters on how far they can and can’t push abortion restrictions. And in some cases – such as court rulings banning demonstrators in front of abortion clinics – the courts have enacted unconstitutional restrictions in order to support the “right” to an abortion.

       The important thing that the pro-life side has been doing is getting the word out about just how awful abortion truly is, and showcasing just how extreme so many on the pro-abortion side are. The problem right now is the same old one that we always have whenever the extreme left thinks it isn’t going to get its way. It throws temper tantrums and starts “mostly peaceful” protests. Even though many members of the public still support making abortions available early in the pregnancy, a majority of the public does not support things such as partial birth abortions, or third trimester abortions.

36. The people on here asserting that somehow over turning Roe or banning abortion entirely (not just leaving it to the states) will solve ‘promiscuity’ are most likely totally wrong. Widespread promiscuity is NOT tied to widespread abortions. It’s tied to widespread BIRTH CONTROL because it was the invention of cheap and easy birth control that led to the “Sexual Revolution”, not the passage of Roe V Wade. The fact is nowadays the vast vast majority of even multi month sexual flings do not result in babies, let alone ‘one night stands’. That’s why women who want to have children whether they are in marriage or not tend to go off birth control (and sometimes without telling their partner). Birth control (not just a condom, but also the hormonal types most women use) is very very effective at removing sex from pregnancy. It’s even more effective if multiple methods are used. You won’t believe the amount of even Young Lotharios who religiously use condoms. Further, even if so and so GETS pregnant (and assume there is no Morning After Pill either) she still has options beyond abortion if she doesn’t want the child in her life. If she is unmarried she can (in most states if not all of them) adopt it out at her leisure the father doesn’t have to be informed. Just like the father doesn’t have to be informed about the abortion (for the few White Knights who think most abortions are pushed by men). There’s also the abandonment statutes in many , possibly most States that say a woman can basically leave an infant at a hospital or other designated place no questions asked if it is done within a certain time frame of the birth. Given all this, don’t expect women to stop spreading their legs anytime soon, esp given the fact it’s harder and harder to get men to marry (even if you can find one you consider ‘worthy’) because Easy Divorce has messed marriage up but that’s an entirely separate post.

    1. For the record, no. What we’re saying is that it will remove the exploitative drives of having sex with minors, etc.
       Birth control IS a game changer. But do you know how many women can’t use it at all?
       Yeah, the entire culture needs fixing. BUT for now let’s make it impossible for men to get rid of an inconvenient pregnancy by pushing the woman to abort, okay?

    2. You are right. It was the widespread availability of contraception that led to widespread promiscuity. Then it was widespread promiscuity that led to making abortion legal. Because the dirty little secret of contraception is that despite the fact that it IS very effective, it DOES still fail. Yes, even with the modern versions of the pill.

       The problem is that since it works MOST of the time, social mores changed. It used to be that only cads would try to seduce a woman and abandon her because it was understood that she could get pregnant. Now, decent guys expect to have sex with a woman by the third date (or earlier these day?), because of course she won’t get pregnant. It’s just part of the dating process and picking out the right one. And since contraception IS so effective, few women consciously worry about getting pregnant. Until it happens. And it seems to me like the default assumption among men is that if a woman gets pregnant, it’s her fault. Because contraception never fails.

       Personally, I think the only form of child spacing that doesn’t lead to widespread promiscuity are the fertility awareness methods. But that’s a whole other post.

37. C4c

38. Of course the riots would follow, right after the craigslist job posting to hire the ‘demonstrators’… or do they just get assigned riots to go to by their local Antifuhfuhfuh chaper now?

39. On a completely unrelated topic a friend has a coworker who was complaining that he doesn’t read because he can’t find anything worth reading. He loves sci fi and military (Army veteran) so my friend recommended Kratzman’s A Desert Called Peace and then tacked on “anything by Sarah Hoyt” plus a couple other authors. My friend was relating this to me and I started laughing hysterically. “Maybe you should have been more specific. You know she also writes romance novels?”. He did not.

    1. With shifters.

    2. And shifters books which read “romancy” to most males.
       Tell him Darkship Thieves. There will be more, and also more space opera.
       And also mil sf in a semi-closed pen name.

       1. ALL of those? And, I guess, fairly soon? Oh, please don’t throw me in that briar patch! 🙂

          1. If my body stops having serial breakdowns…. It could happen. I think this extended BS from body is MOSTLY stress-aftermath.

             1. Hope you get well, or at least better, now that the move is over and you’re more settled down. Looking forward to many more books, in all the series; haven’t read a bad, or even mediocre, one yet… 🙂

                And hopefully the stress level will be even lower after November, if we can stop the fraud. They’re sure to try it, but way more people are aware of the problem these days, and I’m afraid “a la lanterne”, or at least tar and feathers, is a real possibility if they get caught.

       2. Is Darkship Thieves available in ebook form? I’ll buy it if it is.

          1. will be I have the first two proofread and back to me. Hopefully first up this weekend Keep an eye on promo posts. I usually remember to include myself.

       3. I knew it! Your penname is “David Weber”, isn’t it????

          1. alas, no.

          2. I haven’t written any yet. And I’ll tell you guys about the name. Just not Amazon.

             1. Looking forward to it ☺

40. c4c

    1. c4c

41. But the left is running around with their hair on fire. And they’re not all lying on purpose. A lot of them are repeating what they were told: Roe overturned, women and children most affected. Or: Nothing stands between us and women as chattel now. Or: It’s now the Handmaid’s tale.

    Well, some people are taking it calmly. Check out what I just found on Twitter:

    pic.twitter.com/7AGbvtAIac

    — James (🧀,🧀) (@MKUltraMoney) May 4, 2022

    …I’m honestly not sure if this is better or worse than running around with your hair on fire about it.

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