Why I am a concealed carry permit holder

Disarming law-abiding citizens just leaves us subject to the whim of criminals.

California armed gunman on parole and wearing ankle monitor robs Boost Mobile store in broad daylight

Manhattan bodega worker charged with murder wanted to avoid confrontation, video shows

Philadelphia teens beat 73-year-old man to death with traffic cone, in attack caught on video

Texas father shoots pair of teens who attempted to rob car with infants inside

I want to be free. I don’t want to be a perpetual victim.

A Biden union bailout?

The unions have failed to manage their member’s funds responsibly, so we’re going to bail them out? Why should Joe Taxpayer be on the hook for the union’s failure to invest member’s retirement funds responsibly?

Biden’s union pension bailout: What it means, and will it work?

Who’s going to bail out my pension fund when I mismanage it? And what incentive is there for a union to manage their retirement funds responsibly (or for union members to demand responsible management) when there are no penalties for failure?

Talk about buying votes with taxpayer funds… but what did we really expect from someone who promised people $2000 checks for voting Blue?

Disappointed

Although I’m quickly becoming a fan of Elon Musk for his free speech views, I’m disappointed with him on this one. I personally don’t vote for a “party” (and neither should you); instead I vote for a candidate. It’s also dangerous to vote for a candidate/party not because you like them, but instead because you don’t like the alternative. Isn’t that how we got both Trump and Biden??

Elon Musk lights up Twitter after declaring he’ll vote GOP next election: ‘The left should reflect on why’

Frankly, I’m still upset that many ballots have an option to vote for all candidates of a specific part. It’s lazy voting (and dangerous) to vote for a party instead of the candidates. However, this might be an opportunity for learning a valuable lesson: don’t cast your vote until you know for whom you are voting.

Maybe we should just start forcing the political parties to actually give us viable alternatives from which to choose. Yeah, good luck with that…

It’s the Supreme Court’s fault!

No, it’s not. It’s the fault of Congress alone; they have failed to act for almost 50 years, even though many (including the left’s favorite justice, Ruth Bader Ginsberg) have noted that Roe v Wade was vulnerable due to its poor foundation.

And yet Congress still can’t get their act together to protect a woman’s reasonable right to choose, although now I think it’s intentional. The Democrats in Congress need to stretch this crisis until the mid-terms in hopes of salvaging the votes that they have lost by their failures (Afghanistan, the economy, inflation, free speech, COVID, etc.).

So how can they do that? By putting forth an abortion bill that will garner no Republican votes (and lose some Democrats as well). If they can’t pass an abortion bill before the election, the Democrats will continue to blame falling access to abortion services on the Supreme Court and their overturning of Roe v. Wade – and by association, on conservatives/Republicans. But in the end they will only be hurting women in the name of politics and power.

The “Women’s Health Protection Act of 2022” (why it’s not called the politically-correct “Birther’s Health Protection Act of 2022” is beyond me) does this by failing to limit the time frame in which an abortion can be obtained, instead applying a subjective viability standard determined solely by the physician. From the bill:

VIABILITY.—The term “viability” means the point in a pregnancy at which, in the good-faith medical judgment of the treating health care provider, based on the particular facts of the case before the health care provider, there is a reasonable likelihood of sustained fetal survival outside the uterus with or without artificial support.

This viability standard is ripe for abuse. What’s to stop an unscrupulous doctor from determining – for a fee – that your third trimester fetus is not viable, thus allowing it to be aborted? If the bill had proposed at least some reasonable viability term – even the 24 week standard in effect under Roe and Casey – it would at least have had a chance. But an undefined standard that effectively allows abortion right up to birth? I don’t think that’s going to garner any Republican (or conservative Democrat) votes.

But of course, it’s not meant to…

Hypocrite!

It was the job of Congress to pass abortion legislation way back in 1973. Instead, they forced the Supreme Court to wander into clearly political territory with Roe v. Wade to save members of Congress from having to take a tough political stance.

Furious Elizabeth Warren rallies protesters outside Supreme Court: ‘We are not going back!’

Ms. Warren: Please get your ignorant, misinformation-peddling ass back to the Senate and pass an abortion rights bill – just like your brethren should have done in 1973. Work out a compromise that attracts enough votes to overcome the filibuster hurdle. And don’t even think about eliminating the filibuster – have you forgotten already how badly that has worked out for you and your friends so far? Are you so daft as to not see the impact of the escalation that arose out of Harry Reid’s “nuclear option”?

And stop claiming that the Supreme Court has acted in a political manner with respect to this case. The true “political act” was the original Roe v. Wade decision forced upon the court by Congress’s lack of action. Your criticizing the Supreme Court for finally correcting a bad decision made necessary by a failure of Congress is … well … hypocritical.

 

“Batman, I think we’re boned…”

Ostensibly the first time in U.S. history that a Supreme Court draft opinion has been leaked. And what a doozy:

Supreme Court set to overturn Roe v. Wade, leaked draft opinion shows: report

For the record, I agree in principle with the purported draft opinion: the Constitution does not provide for a legal right to an abortion. Roe v. Wade was wrong because it allowed rights to be created from whole cloth, ignoring that any such rights derived from the 14th amendment must be “…deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” It was a poor decision from the start. Can you imagine what an activist court could do with the power to create rights out of thin air, as they saw fit, with no foundation in our Constitution, history or laws?

That does not mean, however, that I am anti-abortion. I agree that a woman should have the ability to terminate an unwanted pregnancy within a reasonable time for any cause, and later with reasonable cause (rape, incest, health, and severe disability for example).  And there is nothing to stop this from becoming a reality outside of the Supreme Court. Only now it will require a tough political decision by weak politicians (who should have made the decision in the first place).

The ability to pass a law legalizing abortion is squarely within the realm (and responsibility!) of Congress. The political decision of Roe v. Wade was required solely because Congress was too afraid to perform its duty. Congress skirted its responsibility, living for another day (pronounced “election”) by leaning on the Supreme Court to make the decision for them. But now the chickens have come home to roost, and Congress finally needs to do its job.

But, alas, the Democrats they won’t get party support for a bill that doesn’t irritate Republicans, and Republicans are just too stupid to know that all they have to do to sweep the House and Senate in November is to pass a bill legalizing a woman’s right to an abortion.

Really – just too f**king stupid…