As a guy, I probably shouldn’t be wading into this subject, but, hey…I’ve got an opinion on it, so here goes.

Today, in yet another HUGE step backwards, Trump announced he’s rolling back a key rule of the Affordable Care Act requiring employers to cover contraception costs for their female employees.  The new rule gives employers the “option” to not provide coverage, but doesn’t actually repeal the rule, which the administration knows would be hugely unpopular.  The anti-choice knuckledraggers are rejoicing the move, even though unintended pregnancies and abortion have dropped after the ACA to their lowest levels since abortion became legal in 1973.  This move is stupid, like most other decisions Trump has made, will drive costs up for women’s healthcare by hundreds of millions of dollars per yer, AND will cause unintended pregnancies to once again start climbing.

So what’s going on here?  Why, in the 21st century, would anyone want to force women to bear children by making contraception harder to get, and abortion services almost impossible to receive.  I understand (even though I don’t agree with) the long standing teachings of the Catholic Church, even though actually being a non-practicing Catholic, I know for a fact that clergy all over the world looks the other way when it comes to the whole no contraception thing.  But why would others so vehemently oppose one of the most empowering methods for women to control their own bodies?

Well, I finally learned the reason just recently, and I can’t believe it took this long for me.  The reason that conservatives hate birth control?  Race.  If you keep birth control services away from well-off white women they’ll start making babies as fast as those poor, dark skinned women.  Yep, as shocking as that sounds, this is a theory born of white supremacists that has now permeated conservative politics to the point that normal people have been brainwashed to believe that women controlling ANY aspect of their own bodily functions especially when they make babies should not be allowed.

Hear me out – Just recently, the New York Times published the story of a young Swedish student who went undercover and penetrated several white supremacist organizations in Europe and the US, even videoing conversations with their leaders.  The one thing that becomes clear in these videos is that these people are weird and scary.  I’m mean REALLY weird and scary.  They dress in goofy khaki shirts and shorts with ties like the Hitler youth used to wear, but spout the same dark ideology as their hero, Hitler.  And they talk continuously of mainstreaming their ideas of separating all the races from one another so each race lives in its own “ethno society”.  One of these weirdos is an American recluse named Greg Johnson who runs Counter Currents Publishing,  that spreads racist hate and drivel.  In a particular video shot undercover, he described how he would organize these societies.  He says the first thing he would do is ban all “voluntary birth control”.  Explaining further, he says,

“Voluntary birth control means that people who are far sighted and responsible restrict their fertility, and people who are impulsive and stupid don’t.  That’s dysgenic on the face of it, so you can’t leave birth control up to the individual.”

He went on to talk about giving women a free year of education for each child they bear, and advocates for sterilization of those convicted of serious crimes.  It goes on and on.  The video is embedded in the NYT article I linked to, and I highly recommend you listen the entire thing even though it, and indeed the entire article, is chilling.  This warped thinking has now actually been mainstreamed far enough to be picked up by conservatives in the US, and it comes straight from ethno fascist ideology that we thought had been stamped out when we destroyed the Nazis in 1945.  But it’s back, and it’s back with a vengeance, aided today by evil toads like Steve Bannon, and useful idiots like Donald Trump.

Learning this little factoid helped me understand what was until recently one of those weird beliefs of conservatives that I never could get.  I have to tell you, this is about as scary as it gets to this old guy.

Hell came to a grinding halt today, frozen solid.  For the first time since Charlton Heston started screaming, “From my cold dead hands!” the NRA blinked and is endorsing “additional rules” on the sale and use of bump stocks, used to convert a merely deadly weapon into a mass murder machine.  For those who don’t know, bump stocks are devices that allow the recoil of a rifle to reset the trigger of a semi-auto weapon into full auto without taking your finger off of the trigger.  The murderer in Las Vegas had TWELVE, yes, I said TWELVE semi-auto rifles fitted with bump stocks, which were used very effectively to shoot over 500 people in about 11 minutes, killing 58 innocents.  He had a number of other weapons with him, apparently in the just in case he wanted to kill more people if needed.

Even congress is starting to come around; we’ve learned that apparently the magic number for a mass shooting is 500 in order to get a congressvarmit to do something besides look down their own trousers to make sure everything is still there.  Those little old run of the mill shootings that kill 20 to 40 victims at a time don’t seem to ring the bell, but shooting 500 damn sure does.  Republicans are falling all over themselves to ban bump stocks, but they’ll probably stop there and set a new threshold for maybe universal background checks at around 1,000 or more victims.

I’ll take what I can get, and hope the devil can’t find any ice picks.

Guess who else is taking private jets?

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry took a chartered jet to Ohio last week, according to an airport management company, the day before fellow Cabinet member Tom Price resigned over his use of private charter flights for government business.

The day before Price resigned?  Price resigned on Friday, September 29th.  Headlines the day before, you ask?  Tom Price needs to resign for taking private jets.

Monkeys – they are a barrel of monkeys.  Screw the swamp.  We need to set fire to the barrel.

What Can We Do About Gun Laws?

There is only one remedy: Get power. If you are as fed up as I am, then register someone to vote or run for office yourself or donate money to someone running to replace these cowardly legislators with a majority for common-sense gun laws. This is about raw power, not persuasion. And the first chance we have to change the balance of power is the 2018 midterm elections. Forget about trying to get anything done before then. Don’t waste your breath.

Just get power. Start now.

From Thomas Friedman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times

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Folks who have been around here for a while know that politics is my second love.  My first love is baseball.  It’s been that way since I was 4 years old and Grandpa Duke took me to my first baseball game in what became a friendship that lasted until he died when I was in college.  Some of the best hours of my life were spent sitting beside this large Creole man with giant hands and enormous feet who taught me how to keep score at a neighborhood ball park.  He loved me deeply.

Instead of doing my homework, I made countless score cards so I would be ready at every game.  It really didn’t matter that I skipped homework because I learned math at baseball games. I could figure ERAs and batting averages.  I understood how geometry works because it was happening right in front of me.  Grandpa had played a little semi-pro ball and got to meet the big boys of summer as they were coming up.  He taught me to tell stories by telling me stories.

I hear his voice every time I sit down at a typewriter, “A good story has a beginning, a middle, and an end.  Now tell me the beginning of your story.”  I became a reporter.  Screw homework. The best teacher I ever had smoked cigars and drank beer while showing me where to watch on the field as a play developed.

Forgive me this memory today.

I started watching the Houston Astros when they were the Colt 45’s.  We would always find a way to get to the game.  “Hold on to my pants leg, Cher, because I can’t reach down that far to grab your hand,” he joked at me, the smallest little girl in town, as we waked into the park.

I have tickets to the ballgame today and tomorrow for the playoffs.  Every year the Astros break my heart. Every year I think this is the year. Then they break my heart, dammit.  We’ve won a few pennants along the way, but we’ve never won the World Series, so every season opens a new possibility that maybe this year … because my story needs an end.

All this is to say that I will open a few threads today and tomorrow because I will be at the game both days.  You can talk about whatever you want and I’ll have someone approve comments when they get a chance.

Go Astros!

Paul Ryan.  I gotta tell you, just saying that name gives me the creeps.

Today I learned that Paul Ryan and a small group of Republican congressmen used to meet regularly to plot the GOP agenda.  They called themselves the Jedi Council.  Oh. Lord. Help. Me.  These guys are Darths-in-Training.

Horribly disgraced Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price was a member of the Jedi Council. I suspect this is where Price got help to come up with his plan that he only reimburse the taxpayers for his seat on an airplane when he made us pay for the whole damn airplane.

I do not want to obsess on this before I get to the important part of this story but you cannot look like this and be a Jedi.  I’m sorry, that’s just how it is. I don’t make the rules but I certainly follow them. You can be small, green, and wrinkled and be a Jedi, but a Jedi does not look constipated all the time.  Or that they have a rash they can’t scratch in public.  Additionally, Jedis cannot be mean sumbitches. I just want to set that straight.

But, here’s the important part.

Speaker Paul Ryan last week urged the White House to reconsider ousting Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, his longtime friend who had come under fire for often using taxpayer-funded private jets for travel, according to two people with knowledge of the call.

Ryan urged Kelly to reconsider and touted the Georgia Republican’s experience in Congress and work in the administration, one of the people familiar with the call said.

Okay, when Ryan runs for president again, and he will, let’s make sure people know that his Jedi Council has a very, very high bar for ripping off the taxpayers for your own personal pleasure.