Thought for the Day

[KnightHawk 2.0]

Donald Trump comparing himself to Jesus and Nelson Mandela is disgusting,despicable and downright shameful. But not surprising at all,because this is what the fraudster and charlatan always does. And him lashing out at prosecutors,state and federal judges,attorney generals and witnesses shows that he knows the walls of justice is closing in on him,and will be found guilty and convicted and sent to prison.

[Stavros]

Abortion has an ability to confuse, anger and fold policy making into a knot of contradictions. Thus the current situation in Arizona exposes some of the ways in which people seeking to justify either side end up in a loop out of which they cannot seem to free themselves, while the real issue -the decision making of a woman, her partner/family/medical professionals seems to be almost an irrelevance to the politics.

Thus

"Laws from the 1860s in states and territories like Arizona, enacted decades before women in the US had won the right to vote, helped lead the 2022 Supreme Court to the “inescapable conclusion … that a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions.”And so, with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that replaced Roe, justices turned away from the ’70s idea that women should have certain rights and returned to the 1860s idea that states should have them instead.
The patchwork of access created by the Dobbs decision has created abortion rights states and abortion ban states. The decision by Arizona’s state Supreme Court to return to the 1864 law is just the latest evidence of the tortured fallout."

But

"The 1864 law in Arizona would ban nearly all abortions, except to save the life of the mother, in the key political battleground and carries a prison sentence for abortion providers, although the state’s Democratic attorney general said in a statement that her office will not enforce it."
Civil War-era abortion ban rises again, which is exactly what some Roe opponents wanted (yahoo.com)

This doesn't make sense -if the law states that it is illegal to abort a life, then surely the woman seeking an abortion, and the medical professionals who perform it must be charged with First Degree Murder -? What is more absurd, having a law that an Attorney General says will not be enforced, or the failure of the advocates to insist that the people responsible for 'murder' be put on trial?

Surely, until the logic of the 'Pro-Life' lobby is implemented as law and in full, citizens will not realize what in fact it means when a woman decides or a medical professional advises and they all end up in prison. It is why some add in get-out clauses, such as rape, incest, health of the mother etc, which by definition then means the 'right to life' is not the priority.

There is no solution to this mess, other than to respect the rights of the individual, and not insist that when a woman becomes pregnant in the USA, she must then hand over control of her body and her decision making rights to a middle aged man who has a bible tucked under his arm for reference, preferring it to the Constitution of the United States.

[Stavros]

Republicans have a Policy, which is that there is no Policy. Just make it up as you go -but wait a minute -does this mean the Supreme Court of Arizona is an irrelevance? That nobody, or rather, everybody in the State can just ignore their rulings, as if they were all optional?

"Nowhere encapsulates the GOP’s backpedal on abortion better than Arizona, whose state supreme court on Tuesday ruled to let an 1864 near-total abortion ban go into effect. That ban, which outlaws abortion in all cases except to save the life of a woman, was passed before Arizona became a state, before the end of the civil war and before women gained the right to vote.Kari Lake, a Republican running to represent Arizona in the US Senate and a diehard ally of Donald Trump, once called that ban “a great law”. But on Tuesday, the inflammatory politician became one of several GOP officials to denounce the ruling, urging the state legislature to “come up with an immediate commonsense solution that Arizonans can support”. On Wednesday, Trump also indicated that he thought Arizona’s near-total ban – whose revival was enabled by a US supreme court ruling he has repeatedly taken credit for – had gone too far. “It’ll be straightened out and as you know, it’s all about states’ rights,” he said."
Arizona’s abortion ban is a political nightmare for Republicans in the 2024 election | Arizona | The Guardian

Coming next -Republicans support a ban on the sale of battlefield weapons in gun shops, at gun fairs, and online....

Can someone turn up at the Republican Convention and seek to replace Trump in a Convention vote? After betraying the Pro-Life Movement, is it time for the Pro-Life Armada to call Time on Donald J. Trump?

[KnightHawk 2.0]

Someone should tell the fraudster and charlatan Donald Trump not too throw stones at glass houses,and for the second day in a row he doozed off in court. His new nickname is Drowsy Donald.

[Stavros]

Here is a thought, or a question, following the remark made by National Enquirer's David Pecker in the Trump Hush Money Trial, in relation to the claim Trump fathered an illegitimate child- Pecker said

"“What was the reason that you were willing to pay for this story at this point?” Steinglass pressed. Pecker replied:
"I had a number of reasons one, I thought it was very important that [Sajudin] wouldn’t be shopping the story to other media outlets. Part two, if the story was true, and I published it, it would be probably the biggest sale of the National Enquirer since the death of Elvis Presley." "
David Pecker tells hush-money trial about paying Trump doorman $30,000 to take a story ‘off the market’ – as it happened | Donald Trump trials | The Guardian

So between August 1977 and 2016 there was no story bigger than the death of Elvis to report to send sales soaring? I guess 9/11 never made it...?

[Stavros]

Benjamin Netanyahu has criticised the student protests on the campuses of US universities -he is free to do so though his thoughts are irrelevant. Mike Johnson appeared in public to endorse free speech at the same time condemning it among the students.

I am not diminishing the actuality, but this is how demonstrations go -in the days when I went on demos, mostly in London, I heard things that were either illegal or offensive, or both. I didn't like it, and on one occasion my companion and I were so offended we left the demo and went home.

Here's the thought: I am old enough to remember anti-Vietnam demos in the US, Kent State, for example, and a friend of mine at the time was a student in the UoW in Madison, where demos were broken up by tear gas -I don't know how many students who were not killed were injured, imprisoned and so on -let's just say that apart from the content, the current wave of demonstrations doesn't look like much when compared to the 1970s, some perhaps many of which were organized by the SDS.

I am not sure they achieve anything these days except to annoy a lot of people -and I don't recall the 'anti-American' protests on college campuses in the 1970s leading for calls for the University heads to resign. As for January 6....

[Stavros]

Is Idaho challenging Texas to be the cruellest, most anti-Woman State in the Union? I read this and wonder what on earth it is that the policy makers believe they are doing.

The US supreme court heard one of the most sadistic, extreme anti-abortion cases yet | Moira Donegan | The Guardian

[broncofan]

Benjamin Netanyahu has criticised the student protests on the campuses of US universities -he is free to do so though his thoughts are irrelevant. Mike Johnson appeared in public to endorse free speech at the same time condemning it among the students.

I am not diminishing the actuality, but this is how demonstrations go -in the days when I went on demos, mostly in London, I heard things that were either illegal or offensive, or both. I didn't like it, and on one occasion my companion and I were so offended we left the demo and went home.

Here's the thought: I am old enough to remember anti-Vietnam demos in the US, Kent State, for example, and a friend of mine at the time was a student in the UoW in Madison, where demos were broken up by tear gas -I don't know how many students who were not killed were injured, imprisoned and so on -let's just say that apart from the content, the current wave of demonstrations doesn't look like much when compared to the 1970s, some perhaps many of which were organized by the SDS.

I am not sure they achieve anything these days except to annoy a lot of people -and I don't recall the 'anti-American' protests on college campuses in the 1970s leading for calls for the University heads to resign. As for January 6....

https://twitter.com/guypbenson/statu...43422680592687

Someone who wants to murder every Jewish person who thinks Israel should continue to be a UN member state. His words are not illegal. The University could decide this violates their code of conduct or that it did when a student at Loyola university said "yall ugly ass Jews should get the hell out of here." In that case an entire room full of anti-racists laughed and not one person even said anything sounding like disapproval. You can look it up. Again, if they want to say stuff like "go back to Poland" to Jews or "we are Hamas" or just carry the flag for Hezbollah, that might be fine (I don't actually know with some of the Hamas stuff). It should also be fine to point out that some of this stuff is reprehensibly stupid, not at all motivated by justice, and makes a mockery of their claim that they stand against for human rights (I protested in favor of a ceasefire early on without doing any of this idiotic stuff; also without threatening city councils either which seems to be increasingly common).

Again, they have the right to do some of those things but I just hope when some Jewish students get good grades while people are yelling baby killer in their ear we don't have to hear any excuses about "ethnic networking" or whatever bullshit antisemites say. Maybe studying instead of going to the fake treyf seder is a better way to get good grades.

No interest in what Netanyahu has to say about the protests but why don't we hear from some left-wing politicians who have been on Presstv. What remarkable integrity that shows. Or am I doing some kind of washing here because the mention of any other despotic regime surely only has the purpose of diverting attention away from Israel, the omnicause for these empty heads.

[broncofan]

I said look it up. However, the Loyola Los Angeles video did not even make the mainstream news. Apparently at their Chicago campus (if they're affiliated) the Hillel was daubed with swastikas. I could post the video of the student saying yall ugly ass Jews get out of here if anyone is interested. The University issued a press release three days later. Doesn't matter.

I think National guard should not be sent in. However, some trespassers are going to be arrested if they're not students or have already been suspended for being gigantic clowns and then show back up.

[Stavros]

Broncofan, I think you are going to make yourself ill if you immerse yourself in the worthless rubbish that has emerged in the last 6 months on social media. It may even be part of the long term trend to intolerance and sectarian hatred that your country has slid into since the 1960s when one part of the US believed it was seeing its version of America being taken away from them. They want it back, and are prepared to use force to do so, in the meantime using inflammatory rhetoric and hateful language to poison debate -if there now is any.

My point was to compare demonstrations as events rather than the individuals demonstrating -on that basis we still have not seen the levels of violence that was evident in the late 1960s and 1970s in the US. Nor can one be surprised that Trump says the demonstrations in Charlottesville were 'peanuts' compared to what is happening on US Campuses- he either forgets the death and injury by his chums, or doesn't care.

I think Jews probably are at risk on campuses, and this is something different from before, unless you factor in whatever hostility the first generation of Black students received when they attended university in larger numbers in the 1950s and 1960s. It suggests the kind of ignorance that is common when it comes to the conflict between Israel and Palestine, and how easy it is to take one position against another, based on a pre-existing prejudice, or an emotional response to media coverage. I would like to think university authorities can control their campus, but then one would also hope that whoever is organising the demonstrations may now re-think what they are doing if it causes harm.

The left, so-called, has been in disarray for decades, I would argue since the 1960s. The key contradiction is the way in which in the 1960s the left - but particularly the so-called 'Revolutionary' left, ie Marxists, Leninists Trotskyists (who are Leninists anyway) gave their support to Nationalist causes -first in Cuba, then Vietnam, and by the end of the decade, in Northern Ireland. That said, in the UK in the 1940s, the left was an early supporter of Israel, on the grounds that Ben-Gurion and the Labour Party were creating a Socialist Israel. They turned against Israel after 1967 when Palestinians became the 'Revolutionaries' and notably after Begin's victory in 1977 which marks the moment when Israeli Fascism arrived in the mainstream. But how any Socialist can support a Nationalist cause is beyond me; it doesn't even make sense as a 'revolutionary' tactic -the Socialist Workers Party in 1979 had the headline in their paper 'All The Way With The Ayatollahs' - on the basis in the chaos of revolution, the Iranian Leninists would prove superior in organization and rally the workers to Socialism. Yeah, right. By the end of the year most of them were either dead or in prison.

Now the left in Israel is in a sorry state, as it is in much, if not all of Europe, and I don't know the American left is in a better condition, thrashing around with multiple causes and not much coherence. In the permissive environment created by a lack of any organizing principle, 'anything goes' has enabled the worst of society to migrate from the fringes to the centre, aided by an uncontrollable social media. It may be better to have it all out in the open, the better to challenge it, and to hope that when 'the people' see and hear what is being done in their name they will reject it, and society can regain some of its dignity. But with Trump still ranting and raving, and even people who loathe him determined to support his candidacy merely because he is 'not Biden', you can see how far you Americans are from detaching yourselves from the existential misery that Netanyahu and HAMAS have inflicted on Israel and Palestine, with their poison dripping into the non-debate around the horrors of Gaza, with only more horrors promised to come, from both sides.

I guess at some point students will have to write essays and sit exams, but it looks like a rough ride. Will it subside if the violence in Gaza subsides? Maybe. Until then, stop reading posts on X, they are x-rated as a warning.