News bits: Abortion wars in Ohio continue; Hillary pipes up!; Regarding the biology of optimism

In more evidence that corrupt, authoritarian radical right (CARR) Repubs could not care less what majority opinion wants when it goes against what CARR Repubs want, the Cincinnati Enquirer reports:

Ohio GOP lawmakers propose stripping judges of power to 

interpret abortion rights, Issue 1

Several Republican lawmakers plan to fight the recently approved abortion rights amendment by trying to overthrow the judicial branch's authority to interpret it.

Ohio voters approved protections for abortion and other reproductive rights, 57-43%, Tuesday. Abortion rights advocates will soon head to court to repeal restrictions and bans on the procedure.

But four GOP lawmakers had another idea.

"To prevent mischief by pro-abortion courts with Issue 1, Ohio legislators will consider removing jurisdiction from the judiciary over this ambiguous ballot initiative," according to a Thursday night news release with quotes from four GOP House representatives. "The Ohio legislature alone will consider what, if any, modifications to make to existing laws based on public hearings and input from legal experts on both sides." 

The news release from Reps. Jennifer Gross, R-West Chester; Bill Dean, R-Xenia; Melanie Miller, R-Miller; and Beth Lear, R-Galena and was titled: "DECEPTIVE OHIO ISSUE 1 MISLED THE PUBLIC BUT DOESN'T REPEAL OUR LAWS." Ohio Value Voters, an anti-abortion organization, shared the same quotes in a Friday news release.  

“We will withdraw jurisdiction from the courts so that they cannot misapply Issue 1 for the benefit of the abortion industry,” Gross said in the Ohio Value Voters' release.

This is what tyranny looks like. It is also what the CARR Republican Party looks like because that’s what it is. CARR Repub elites are solidly pro-tyranny. Tyrants don't accept the will of the voters or the people, unless they are forced to accept it. Period.

We're in a war over wealth and power for the elites vs. the rest of us. It really is just that simple.

_________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________

The Canadian Broadcast Corp. reported about comments that Hillary (yeah, that Hillary) made about DJT:

Hillary Clinton compared Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler this week as she warned about the dangers of a second Trump presidency.

"I think it would be the end of our country as we know it, and I don't say that lightly," the former first lady and U.S. secretary of state said on daytime talk show The View on Wednesday.

During the interview, Clinton, 76, recalled her tenure as U.S. secretary of state and said she used to refer to the concept of elected leaders who were "one and done," meaning they would be democratically elected, and then do away with the electoral system and an independent press.

"And you could see it in countries where — well, Hitler was duly elected, right?" said Clinton, who is a Democrat.

"And so all of a sudden, somebody with those tendencies, those dictatorial, authoritarian tendencies, would be like, 'OK, we're going to shut this down. We're going to throw these people in jail,' and they didn't usually telegraph that.

"Trump is telling us what he intends to do. Take him at his word. The man means to throw people in jail who disagree with him, shut down legitimate press outlets, do what he can to literally undermine the rule of law and our country's values."

Hm, that sounds somewhat familiar. Think . . . . think . . . . . think . . . . . oh yeah, now I remember. Russian journalist Masha Gesson. She reported on the fall of Russian Democracy to Putin. She wrote this after Hillary made her concession speech to DJT the day after the 2016 election. This is from Autocracy: Rules for Survival, that Gessen wrote for the New York Review of Books, in November 2016 (my 2020 post about it is here):

“Thank you, my friends. Thank you. Thank you. We have lost. We have lost, and this is the last day of my political career, so I will say what must be said. We are standing at the edge of the abyss. Our political system, our society, our country itself are in greater danger than at any time in the last century and a half. The president-elect has made his intentions clear, and it would be immoral to pretend otherwise. We must band together right now to defend the laws, the institutions, and the ideals on which our country is based.”

That, or something like that, is what Hillary Clinton should have said on Wednesday [in her concession speech to Trump].

That speaks for itself. Hillary did not speak up in Nov. 2016. But now she is in 2023. Good for her. Another mind was gone woke about the threat of American kleptocratic tyranny from the CARR Repub Party and its undisputed, morally rotted leader and dictator wannabe.

_________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________

An interesting research article commented about data related to cognitive biology and optimism:

Looking on the (B)right Side of Life: Cognitive Ability 

and Miscalibrated Financial Expectations

You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality. — Ayn Rand (normally I would not quote Rand because she was a deranged lunatic and a monster, but this bit makes sense)

It is a puzzle why humans tend toward unrealistic optimism, as it can lead to excessively risky behavior and a failure to take precautionary action. Using data from a large nationally representative U.K. sample (N = 36,312), our claim is that optimism bias is partly a consequence of low cognition—as measured by a broad range of cognitive skills, including memory, verbal fluency, fluid reasoning and numerical reasoning. We operationalize unrealistic optimism as the difference between a person’s financial expectation and the financial realization that follows, measured annually over a decade. All else being equal, those highest on cognitive ability experience a 22% (53.2%) increase in the probability of realism (pessimism) and a 34.8% reduction in optimism compared with those lowest on cognitive ability. This suggests that the negative consequences of an excessively optimistic mindset may, in part, be a side product of the true driver, low cognitive ability.

Unrealistic optimism or optimism bias—the tendency for individuals to overestimate the chance of favorable outcomes occurring and underestimate the chance of bad (Weinstein, 1980)—has been found to be one of the most pervasive human traits across many domains (Sharot, 2011). For instance, research has shown that individuals tend to underestimate the likelihood of developing a drinking problem or getting divorced (Weinstein, 1980) and to overestimate their future earnings (Dawson, 2017) and how long they are going to live (Puri & Robinson, 2007). Our established tendency toward unrealistic optimism poses an evolutionary puzzle as normative models of human judgment, like expected utility theory, suggest unbiased assessments of probabilities are advantageous. Like any other judgmental bias, optimism bias distorts the decision-making process, leading to systematic decision errors, increased rash and risky behavior (de Meza et al., 2019) and a failure to take precautionary measures (Dillard et al., 2009).