Taking Aim at the Babies

The most heinous talking point some Republicans try and push in the abortion fight is that Democrats support infanticide. Abortions so late in pregnancy that the baby is born alive then killed. At first what can one say.

If it was born alive does it even qualify as an abortion and belong in this debate at all. Shouldn’t it just be a murder.

But then of course me being me my mind got rolling. And I got researching to see if my thoughts were backed up with some facts.

And it turns out it is the republicans in congress and in state houses that have attempted and sometimes succeeded in infanticide and other murder by denial from afar. Because they have time after time voted and sometimes succeeded in ending coverage for low income individuals/families of medicaid, aca insurance and CHIP. All these programs have reduced mortality rates of mothers to be during pregnancy and childbirth and infants and children. When Republicans vote to end them or reduce access to them they are pretty much saying they don’t care that it will mean women and infants and children will die do to inability to afford access to health care. They also have tried to cut in half WIC. Nutrition for pregnant mothers.

Is it really more important to give e a tax break to a millionaire or a billionaire or multinational businesses who already barely pay any taxes. Who won’t die if they don’t get the tax cut.

They say every life matters. But they vote like they don’t give a damn.

Pro Choice Plan B… Spread the Field

I’ve been doing a lot of reading and thinking this week with the new case before the Supreme Court in which a group of conservative doctors want to stop the fad approval of mifepristone for abortions. Especially through the mail. It does seem that it might fail because they are to actually being harmed, so have no right to be suing. But Alito and Thomas threw them a bone in the form of a tip to try the Comstock act next time.

If this was done and actually was put back in use could it be used only for this one thing? Because it covers pretty much all of reproductive information and porn and sex toys. All three of which are huge money making industries.

Then I read an article suggesting using an earlier court precedent that says the government has no standing to make laws in regards to how a family choses to live. In theory it might work. But it has huge problems for me. Since I suspect we have since it was put in place passed many laws contradictory to it that benefit both children and wives. Like child abuse and spousal rape.

My idea plays on a quote I saw from Alito which is the basis on the pro life movement that life starts at conception but he added that everything must be done to bring about this life no matter how small a chance it has to make it. I think that was the quote. I couldn’t find it again this morning.

And it is under that theory of life should be fought for no matter how small the chance of survival is part of my new plan. The second is I have always found that pro life people focus too much on fetuses. Except for the catholics. So I think we should hold them to their word that all lives should be fought for even if the other person who has to fight along doesn’t want to and the government will have to make them. One Example a child gets cancer put the parents insurance refuses to pay for the treatment because they say it is experimental and has a very low chance of success but is the Childs only hope. Then sue them to make them pay for it under the threat of a murder charge if they don’t and the child dies. This should happen any time insurance turns someone down with a fatal diagnosis but an available treatment that could offer a possible cure no matter how low the chances. After all the Supreme Court has already said that businesses have the same standings as citizens under the constitution.

If they don’t have insurance. Then sue the doctors that offer the treatments if they wont treat them. Or the hospitals if they won’t take them into their facilities. They shouldn’t be able to claim any kind of financial way out of this if women can’t.

Show the Supreme Court and Pro lifers that if they want Fetuses to be considered little teeny tiny humans than the rights they want them to have they have to give to the rest of us. The right to impose our chance to stay alive onto other un willing people that we may both physically and financially ruin. Even cause the death of.

The Slippery Slope of Litigious Lactose Intolerant Starbucks Drinkers

This morning I read that in California a class action lawsuit is happening against Starbucks for charging more for dairy alternative milk products by lactose intolerant coffee drinkers. They claim they a have a serious medical condition recognized as having a disability being lactose intolerant. If the ADA recognizes this I find it a bit dubious since no one has to drink milk and suffer the ramifications of being intolerant to the lactose in it. And of course there are products with he lactose removed. And as far as I know there are no long term or serious effects of lactose intolerance like there are with celiacs disease or say a peanut allergy. One of which can kill you and the other can lead to an inability to absorb nutrients.

But let’s assume it is ADA recognized. Then why are they only suing a company that actually offers an alternative that addresses their needs at all? Why aren’t they suing places that don’t offer any? Like most ice cream stores? Or if they do, do they charge more for vegan plant based ice cream? I know that the few pizza places I have seen that offer Vegan cheese charge more. They also charge more for gluten free. Hence the slippery slop I lead off with. Because if these drinkers win. Then Celiacs could be next and they have a better case I feel. Why should they be charged more for a gluten free crust when they have a serious medical condition requiring a gluten free alternative?

Restaurants mostly run on thin margins but should they be forced to offer alternatives on every menu item to ever possible medical diet issue out there? It would financially ruin every one.

Secondly, if it passed, how would Starbucks ask if someone was allowed to claim a disability and a lower price on the more expensive milks. You just can’t look at someone and tell if they are. And if it becomes common knowledge that they have to charge the same for people with lactose intolerance then everyone will of a sudden be lactose intolerant. It will be an impossible situation. Im not sure if or how much more lactose free milk costs than regular milk. But all of the plant based ones definitely cost more.

Sometimes life just isn’t fair. But a fancy coffee drink isn’t a necessity of life. Like going to school, or being to get from a parking space to a store, or using a public rest room. Or even getting into the restaurants themselves.

So please withdraw this waste of the courts time and think about more than just your petty annoyance at a big corporation. because this thing could snowball into something bigger that hurts businesses much smaller. Maybe save the money from those cups of coffee and donate to some food banks. Maybe even se if they have needs for people with dietary needs like lactose issues of Gluten free. Which as you know are very pricey.

Let’s build Social housing or Give us 50 mil for free per year and we won’t solve the main problem..

Yes the people behind Seattles new social housing authority now want the voters to approve a tax on workers salaries that are above 1 million. And the main info they give is that it will help them aquire or build 2000 units in 10 years. Or on average 200 a year.

So being me I went to look for more info. And the first I found was that this money would help them get loans that combined with rent from tenants would keep them building new units. I thought it odd that they would include rent from low income tenants as an asset to move towards other buildings ands not just to maintain the current building and repay the loan that was used to build or acquire it. After all aren’t they keeping the rents low. Sounds a bit like a pyramid scheme.

But I kept digging. I knew they were going to have some mixing of incomes. They even seemed to think this was a novel approach in low income buildings. But sha already does this in some of their developments.

Then I found a more in depth article at crosscut. And it was enlightening. And not really in a good way. It made me think about how some people online refer to how good the program in Vienna is. But they don’t seem to realize that it is funded b the whole country not just the city of Vienna. And Austria only has the one large city to do this for. So looking to Seattle to pull this off for it self seems to not be an equal under taking to Vienna numbers wise. Then I read the article and once I got far into it it became clear that this group wants to house a certain group of people. People who fall in to the those who earn 60-120% of the median income. They do not want to house those who are homeless and need any services. The quote was people who earn in tis bracket only get offered studios and one bedrooms in the retail market. my mind boggled. 60-120% = 69 – 138 thousand dollars. Minimum wage is 40 thousand before taxes I believe. So if you’re single and earning minimum wage you may not qualify for one of their buildings.

And the whole reason I think people approved this group in the first place was to build more housing to get all the homeless off the streets and out of the encampments. Not to help someone like me who could actually move from my market rate apartment into one of these social housing places and pay less. Therefore opening up a market rate unit which would not help a homeless person at all. It could bring rents down. But it won’t bring it down enough to help those living on the street or in their cars.

And if you aren’t going to help those at the lower end then why don’t you actually put together a business plan and find some investors. Don’t hit us up for free money. Because that is what tax money is. You know you don’t have to give it back. And we all know the city is underwater financially already. So if they added that tax wouldn’t it be better spent getting the homeless mental health care or drug treatment. Or more mental health care in our schools.

Because you aren’t really here to help all of our citizens find housing you just want this sweet spot of citizens who have decent jobs but don’t earn too much or too little. who won’t be too much of a problem that they might need services. Which would make it more desirable for the higher income neighbors. But they aren’t the ones struggling to find places to live are they. So house your optimal citizens just don’t ask the government to pay for it. They have other more pressing matters right now.

if I have gotten this all wrong show me. Put out a plan showing how you are going to go about your business for the next 5 and 10 years. And I want details. Who you will be housing, where and how and how much it will cost? The devil is always n the details. Just ask the homeless authority which just keeps trying to write up plans. And spending millions doing it.

Dear JD Vance….

I saw this quote from you this morning I believe it was from an interview with George Stephanopolous.

“I think it’s actually vey unfair to the victims of sexual assault, to say that somehow their lives are being worse by electing Donald Trump for President, when what he’s trying to do, I think, is restore prosperity.”

Well from here I think you are totally wrong. And it has a lot more than just the E jean Carrol cases that make him a problem for survivors of sexual assault. First off prosperity only matters now because Trump stacked the Supreme Court to repeal national access to abortions. So a victim of sexual assault who gets impregnated by her assailant may need to travel out of their home state to access an abortion. And that costs money that some low income people can’t afford. But Trumps prosperity has to reached these people. His has mostly just made the wealthy richer.

Which brings us back to losing access to abortions for victims of all kinds of sexual assault in many states. We have seen states say there can be exceptions until a woman asks for the abortions and are denied. Over and over. Unless their life is in immediate danger.

And I don’t think having a President who was caught on tape bragging about grabbing women by the pussy and getting away with it, wether it was true or just him being a braggart makes any woman feel good but especially not ones who have been assaulted, groped or harassed.

And let’s remember Trump may feel he doesn’t have his first amendment rights any more but he has tried to sue multiple times for defamation.

And P.S Check the economy statistics things are on the rise.

An AI Maga Dystopian Near Future Xmas Eve Story…That has nothing to do with Xmas

I shall preface my story with the fact that I have not slept well for the last sixth nights. And that I have read in the past that people in the last couple of decades have struggled with the problem of having too many choices. For example in the past you would go to buy sneakers in the 1950s and maybe have a few brands at most. Now a days you have many brands with several lines and designs. Same with Almost everything you want to buy, so you go online to do research and just trying to find the right site to get recommendations is another overload. It is too much. Just too much to buy a new bubble bath. I just want to relish and not break out in a rash or smell terrible. OK.

Now on with the story.

We are at the beginning of AI. We chat with it and it amuses us or sometimes upsets us with it says back to us. It makes us pictures when we ask it. But soon or maybe a little later than the people behind it are predicting it will be woven into out lives possibly in the form of something like a personal agent who lives on our devices to do the heavy thinking for us. You will say you need a new pair of slippers and it will remember that you liked the soft feel of your old ones but not the color but complimented your friends slippers for their color and will shoe 2 pairs that you will of course love and order tell it to order the first ones like it new you would.

All the while the far-right has been secretly in league with the AI bros to change the direction of public schools. Pioneered by the Florida Governor DeSantis who was and the forefront of removing education, knowledge, facts, and critical thinking from public schools. This was a common goal of both Mega who felt this benefited God but it was also a goal of those behind AI, who knew the future would be more efficient and better for everyone if AI did the heavy intellectual lifting.

Mega people loved that it seemed it was all about going back to the good old days of god and morals. But Magans were never the sharpest tools in the tool box. But they were the most primed for this convergence in theory. After all they chanted for Trump to be a Dictator. and the one thing a dictator does is limit choices.

(side bar here on the Trump Dictator thing) I don’t know why news people don’t point out that his supporters clamor for Trump and say they want a Dictator. But when Covid was here and we were all told to wear masks and stay 6 feet apart and stay at home a lot of these same people decried that the government imposing its will on them. This was American the land of the free. So it seems to me these people don’t want necessarily a dictatorship for its own sake they just want a way to make the whole country live the way they want to live. Despite the fact the country was founded on the principle of the majority not being to remove the rights of the minority. Especially religiously. But of course they mostly support DeSantis and his dumbing down the already struggling US education system.)

Now back to our story.

Now I have my new slippers. And AI is doing all of the thinking for Americans. Well not all just those who got to public schools. The ones who run the business are still making their products. Maybe less since AI has figured out the best products for the majority of the consumers with the best profit margins. And robots have filled the factories. Of course no company is satisfied with their cut of the market. So there is always battles over who can influence the AI’s to buy from them.

But if they wealthy are running the businesses and robots are manning the factories what are the rest of the people doing?

This brings us to the third part of the conspiracy happening now. Blocking low wage immigrants. It turns out some of the jobs it is hard to get robots to do well is harvesting crops without dammaging them. Currently and in the near past Americans didn’t wan to do these jobs as they were very hard and low paid. But if there are no other jobs to be had then guess what? Unless of course we keep ignoring climate change. We will also have a lot of jobs taking care of our older citizens. No robot can wipe a but gently like a human can.

And you know Republicans want you working. And I’m sure AI will come up some other non thinking soft handed jobs humans can do in the future.

Or maybe AI will do the math and realize the companies don’t need so many consumers to keep up profits and will start getting humans to join doomsday cults.

Oh well. It’s crazy what comes to mind when you have lack of sleep. Happy Holidays. And on to 2024.

Let’s go Cherry Picking, better known as the religious rights Love Hate relationship with science.

I just read an email I received from some annoying group I did not sign up with. It was about a boy who got in trouble for wearing a shirt to middle school saying there are only two sexes or genders. I can’t remember exactly now. But they claim it was his free speech reply to the school having pride celebrations. And they were supporting his free speech and anyway science supports that there are only two genders the article/email stated. I at first did wonder are these the same free speech people who cant have books in their libraries that other kids might read peacefully by themselves about issues they believe in. But that is not about science free speech and another post.

So here they are saying science backs them up. I’m not so sure it truly does and I will get to that further down.

But first. A lot of these people against LGBQT rights take issue with some basic science like how old the earth is. That we descend from apes or even come from out of the ocean. How about some climate change deniers? Or Covid deniers? Or the Politician who thought women could keep themselves for getting pregnant from a rape?

Back to two genders. Yes there are two chromosomes x and y that affect sexual development in humans. But we do know that in one extreme case in gestation the y chromosome can not work in an x/y baby and the male sexual organs do not develop normally leading to a condition? called hermaphroditism. Now a days it may not be seen as a condition by those with it. But it does show that the x Y chromosomes do not work simply. They like all of our genes are affected by many different things going on in our bodies and while we are gestating in our mother their bodies too. After all our dan is made up of only a t g c. Like all other animals as far as I know and yet we have so much diversity with those 4 little letters. So it seems foolish to think that x and y would one produce 2 locked in place narrow outcomes. Especially when we have people throughout history all over the world telling us other wise.

True scientist are ever learning and evolve with new information. While people who are devout in their belief in an unchanging unknowable being can’t seem to take in new information. Or there are those who claim they are devout and use this to get ahead in life while using their fellow devotees against others in ways that hurt people who are doing the same things as the users.

Example: The head of the Florida GOP and his wife who claim to be anti LGBQT but ow after the husband has been accused of rape now admit to having threesomes with the female accuser.

I know I get off track a lot. But the I read things it just makes me go why do people do these things and why do others listen to these people and not question all of this.

The New US Civics being Taught in Some Red States have a Problem.

I read an article today about the remaking of civics classes in Florida and North Dakota. It is mostly being overseen by a Religious college. And the main tenants are be proud of America, the constitution is based on Jewish/Christian morals so learn to teach the Bible. Communism and socialism are bad. Memorization is good. Learning critical thinking and thinking for ones self is bad.

So here I go being bad and thinking for myself. If the constitution and the founding of America is rooted in the bible and Christianity and people who go to church are often tithed or give money regularly to their churches, who then pay their pastors or other religious leaders and staff, but then use a lot of it to do charitable work. Charitable work being mostly to help those in need. So the church takes money from everyone then spends a good portion of it on a smaller number of people in need. They don’t distribute evenly to every parishioner equally. Or use it all to benefit the whole. Hmmm. This sounds an awful lot like socialism. And if our country was founded partly on the ideals of Christianity a socialist construct why then are we teaching that socialism is a bad thing. Communism was bad and has pretty much failed everywhere. But in Europe types of Socialism is going as strong as we are.

Our founders did not want the church and state to mix but the current right wing desperately are trying to get religion into the government at all levels. As seen in this New Civics. Except when it comes to the obvious fact that religion is a socialist system a lot of the time. In fact in the past people would say let churches handle charity not the government. But if they want to mix the two then they have to face the fact socialism is not a bad thing or religion as they push it is a bad thing. Or mixing church and state is a bad thing.

This argument does not deal with the corruption of false prophets. Who steal from believers and live large off the prayers of others.

When AI meets up with Data Mining let the Privacy nightmare begin?

At least this is what hit me last night in bed as I couldn’t fall asleep. Not because this came to mind but for other reasons.

But this could be the perfect meeting of the two digital issues that government authorities, at least in the US have so far not dealt with. And when it comes to data collecting it has been going on for a very long time in digital internet time. And most people myself included hand over way too much with out reading the fine print.

I have read int the past that even if they don’t have your name attached to the data they can cross match data form different databases and figure out who you are. There is that much info about you out there and it probably doesn’t really take as much info as one would like to figure out who we are and where we live and so on.

Now we have AI which is arguably algorithms on steroids. So it seems this will just make data moving faster and more efficient. Which they can than analyze to affect your life in ways we already no such as credit card interest rates, loan interest rates, insurance rates. people have tried to fight this kind of profiling through laws. But with AI and data mining will any laws which can be few and far between keep up.

Just some thoughts. I have no time right now to add more have an appointment. Add that to my data file.

Dear Mr. Christie Please stop adding to the dumbing down of America.

It is not due to Jill Biden being a college Professor in education. Hello she is actually a great example of getting an education. She is a professor after all.

Now there is enough blame to go around but the teachers union is closer to the bottom of the list.

You need to look at your party the Republicans. The party who have demonized experts and science and public education. Who have pulled funding from all levels of education. Some to end private schools with no accountability. And some for college education and academic studies. Which have left us trailing behind other countries that invested in research in the sciences across the board through universities and other institutions. Hoping that capitalism and business would win the day. But they usually trail after the basic science not lead. Thankfully there is some awakening to this.

And now the Republicans are killing education in the name of right wing fear. Ignoring that the country was founded on religious freedom not tyranny of one group over all others. Even if they are in the majority in some areas.

And yes the teachers union should address teachers who are ineffectual. But look at congress who can’t even impeach a President who sends his followers to storm the Capitol and breach it to stop the next elected President from replacing him. If you don’t set the top from the top what do you expect.

I also have always felt we need to found our public schools differently in a more equitable way. Not where the rich get more funding than the poor due.Why should any teacher need to pay for materials for their classrooms? It should be at least pooled at the state level. We need to promote education to our kids. And not just straight academic because not everyone is going to excel at that and we need people doing every kind of job when they grow up.

So tech schools for high school are great. Truck driving is facing a crisis. But the Republicans and their anti-union has made a lot of these jobs less appealing and feasible.

And every husband should listen to what their spouse says. But to insinuate that each person in a relationship doesn’t have an independent mind is really insulting. get that there are certain religious marriage philosophies that adhere to the man leading ultimately. But it don’t believe that is the Bidens or that they believe the opposite.