Thinking about “pledges” again today…

I might be wrong but I’m pretty sure pledges are meant to be a serious thing.  If you take one, you are swearing a personal oath to such.

There are many kinds of pledges.  Here is one:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,

and to the Republic for which it stands,

one nation under God, indivisible,

with liberty and justice for all.

Seems pretty clear cut.  Let’s check it out, definition-wise, on a more granular level:

I: Me, myself, my person

Pledge: Promise, an undertaking, a vow

Allegiance: Loyalty, faithfulness, fidelity

Flag of the United States: 🏳, a national symbol, stands for the shared history, pride, principles, and commitment of its people

Republic: power held by the people and their elected reps

One nation: e pluribus unum, out of many…one

Under God: The supreme being, the Almighty (note: Wiki shows that “one nation” and “under God” are not separated by a comma.  IOW, they come as a package)

Indivisible: Inextricable, entangled, one and the same

Liberty: Independence, freedom, autonomy

Justice: Fairness, even handedness, righteousness

All: Everyone

Yes, a lot there.  But the weeds always tend to be messy. 🤷‍♀️ That’s why many people much prefer to stay out of them.  Life is a lot simpler then.

Question 1: What do you think about the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance?  If you are not an American, and if you have such a thing, what do you think about your country’s pledge of allegiance?

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Marriage vows are another kind of pledge.  They can vary in wordage but in the end, the bottom line, it is to pledge a commitment to another.

Question 2: Are wedding vows/pledges on par with/equals to other kinds of pledges of allegiances, commitment-wise (i.e., taken as seriously)?  Or, is one kind of pledge more “important,” more “sacred,” than the other?

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Yet another kind of pledge can be taken by politicians upon entering office, up to and including a president of the United States.  It’s called the “Oath of Office” pledge and it swears allegiance to the Constitution of the United States:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God."

Question 3: How solemnly or faithfully do you believe politicians take this Oath?  Is it just a nicety, a formality, something “for show?”

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Granted, things can get complicated but give us your general opinion on these things we call “pledges.”  Please get into the weeds as much as you dare!! 😉

GOP poison flows in the House; Reality derangement syndrome; Boofer redux

House Republican ill-will and bad faith fatally poison the institution: I was wondering if they were going to do it. They said they were going to do it. By golly, they actually did it. The NYT reports:

McCarthy Ejects Schiff and Swalwell From Intelligence Committee

In an act of official retribution for how Democrats treated Republicans when they were in the majority, the speaker barred the Californians from the panel, arguing that they were not fit to serve

The move was a much-anticipated tit-for-tat after Democrats, then in the majority, voted in 2021 to eject two Republicans, Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona, from congressional committees for internet posts that advocated violence against their political enemies. It was also payback for the decision by Nancy Pelosi, then the House speaker, to bar Republicans who had helped former President Donald J. Trump spread the election lies that fueled the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol from sitting on the special committee investigating the riot.

This is moves the federal government closer to a corrupt, radical right tyranny-Christian theocracy. There is nothing democratic or rational about this. Greene and Goasar publicly advocated for violence. Schiff and Swalwell tried to find and report truth. Pelosi rejected Jordan and another(s) who would have sabotaged the 1/6 committee. Republicans seek retribution in anti-democratic authoritarian bad faith and ill will. Democrats sought truth and civility. 

The House is now a broken partisan, authoritarian institution. Maybe it will recover, but maybe it never will. The 2024 elections will probably shed significant light on which route Americans want to take, knowingly or not. 

This is just more evidence of how terrifyingly radicalized and anti-democratic the GOP has become.

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Reality derangement syndrome: RDS is something that the Republican Party now routinely and heavily relies on. For Republican elites, RDS usually seriously poisons and sometimes completely kills reality, reasoning, rhetoric, policy, behavior, morality and/or democracy. Newsweek reports on an example that is about as clear as it can get:

Microsoft's Changes to Xbox Console Leave Republicans Outraged

Microsoft has announced changes to its Xbox console settings that is to allow users to save more energy and reduce the carbon impact of their gaming. But this has been read (or misread) by Republican representatives and organizations as the "woke brigade" wanting to "take your Xbox."

The company included a feature that allows the console to pick a time of the night for maintenance and updates to use the most renewable energy from the electrical grid, and a "shutdown" setting that can replace the sleep mode, which it says saves 20 times the energy.

His explanation of the new shutdown setting stipulates that it "will not affect performance, gameplay, or your console's ability to receive overnight updates" and can be adjusted "at any time" so users can choose "what works best for you." Hauglie said two consoles that switched to the shutdown setting for a year would save the same amount of carbon as a tree planted and grown for a decade.

However, this was interpreted in an article by Blaze Media, a conservative outlet, as suggesting Microsoft would "force gamers to power down to fight climate change."

"First gas stoves, then your coffee, now they're gunning for your Xbox," Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) tweeted on Monday, citing a previous furor over remarks made by an official from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission about the health harms of gas stoves. The CPSC chair stated emphatically at the time that it was not looking to ban gas stoves.

"A default setting does not mean they are 'forcing' anyone to do anything," one user responded. "As an Xbox owner, this has been a choice for a while now. I appreciate that they offer it."

"They want to take your guns. They want to take your gas stoves. And now they want to take your Xbox," Troy Nehls, a congressman for Texas, wrote in a similar vein to Cruz's remarks. "What's next?"

This is more evidence of the extreme radicalization of the GOP and the key role that RDS plays in it. This also points out, once again, the intense elite Republican opposition to any serious effort to acknowledge or deal with climate change. By now, the accumulated evidence strongly evinces the GOP's pro-pollution, pro-climate change stance and policy. That cannot be much clearer.

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A trip down memory lane: Regarding the Kavanaugh non-investigation: Remember the fun exploits of Brett the beer boofer, and his side-kick Squee? Over the last couple of days, multiple sources have been reporting about a documentary that was made in secrecy and released without advance publicity. It was all about the FBI's valiant non-investigation of Brett during his Senate confirmation hearings. The Guardian writes: 

Justice, a last-minute addition to the schedule, aims to shine a light not only on the women who have accused Kavanaugh, a Donald Trump nominee, but also the failed FBI investigation into the allegations. “I do hope this triggers outrage,” said producer Amy Herdy in a Q&A after the premiere in Park City, Utah. “I do hope that this triggers action, I do hope that this triggers additional investigation with real subpoena powers.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse questioned FBI director Christopher Wray on this subject back in August:

Whitehouse: As you know, we are now entering the fourth year of a frustrating saga that began with an August 2019 letter from me and Senator Coons, regarding the Kavanaugh supplemental background investigation, and I’d like to try to get that matter wrapped up. First, is it true that after Kavanaugh-related tips were separated from regular tip-line traffic, they were forwarded to White House counsel without investigation?

Wray: I apologize in advance that it has been frustrating for you. We have tried to be clear about our process. So when it comes to the tip line, we wanted to make sure that the White House had all the information we have, so when the hundreds of calls started coming in, we gathered those up, reviewed them, and provided them to the White House—

Whitehouse: Without investigation?

Wray [long pause]: We reviewed them and then provided them to—

Whitehouse: You reviewed them for purposes of separating them from tip-line traffic, but did not further investigate the ones that related to Kavanaugh, correct?

Wray: Correct.

Whitehouse: Is it also true that, in that supplemental B.I. [background investigation], the FBI took direction from the White House as to whom the FBI would question and even what questions the FBI could ask.

Wray: So, it is true that, consistent with the longstanding process that we have had—going all the way back to at least the Bush administration, the Obama administration, the Trump administration, and continue to follow currently under the Biden administration—that in a limited supplemental B.I., we take direction from the requesting entity, which in this case was the White House...

Yuk. That was a nauseating trip down memory lane. Despite the producer's intent to provoke outrage and an investigation with teeth, nothing will probably come of this documentary. It's merely an inconvenient nasty in the punch bowl that can politely be ignored. 

Honestly, just look at Wray's comments in that last paragraph. The FBI takes its orders from the White House. It cannot be independent or competent when it comes to political matters like this. The rule of law just does not apply. But, we can give the people who made the documentary a round of applause for outstanding effort. 👏👏👏 

As we all know, Republican elites vehemently oppose any investigations of the criminality, treason, provocations of violence and sleaze among their own, and that's that. But there will be plenty of investigations of Joe Biden, Hunter, the infamous laptop, the pics of Hunter's junk, and a slew of of other Democrats, and woke people and companies. Bring on the RDS-fueled witch hunts! 

Surprise!! Boofer's on the Supreme Court!

GOP tax code reform; The reality of capitalism sinks in with some after it bites

GOP style tax code reform: The Hill writes about a proposed House Republican reform proposal that favors the rich and lower income households, while shafting the middle class. Replace the entire tax code with a single 30% on everything tax, but with a tweak, and mostly get rid of the IRS by shifting tax collection responsibility to the states. The Hill writes:

The advantage to higher earners is so pronounced that the legislation includes a “prebate,” a cash transfer program in which taxpayers get regular checks equal to the amount that people at the poverty level would owe in taxes.

The result is a smaller tax burden for the highest and lowest earners and a bigger one for people in the middle.

A 2006 study by the House Small Business Committee on a similar proposal found that the tax burden for people making more than $200,000 and less than $15,000 a year would go down, while the burden for people making something in between would go up.

Republicans say that tax simplification is needed, which is true. Republicans have favored tax code complexity for decades because of loopholes for the rich that are routinely built in. Apparently, this proposal would reduce the burden on the rich even more than the existing code allows. 

Tax liability for the top 20% of earners would fall from 84.2% to 65.1%. People in the middle would go from 3.8% to 10.5%. Apparently, Republicans like the idea of states controlling tax revenues because it is easier for rich people and big corporate interests to subvert and corrupt a state tax agency compared to the federal IRS, which is already significantly subverted and corrupted by the rich and powerful. One can imagine how rotted state tax agencies will be once the state GOP has had time to sink its Christian nationalist-capitalist claws in states that Republicans control. 

Republicans really do want to starve the federal beast to its death, and then us to our deaths.

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Capitalism can be callous: Some of the people being laid off from jobs at tech giants are discovering that they are expendable at will. Business Insider writes:

A Google engineer laid off after over 16½ years at the firm said in a LinkedIn post that the tech giant viewed staff as "100% disposable."

Justin Moore, an engineering manager at Google, was one of the 12,000 people affected by Google's layoffs last week. Moore wrote that he found out he had been laid off via an automated account deactivation at 3:00 a.m.

"This also just drives home that work is not your life, and employers — especially big, faceless ones like Google — see you as 100% disposable," Moore said.

"Live life, not work," he added.

MAGA!! to that. Fire those suckers and losers!

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A warning about personal data safety on the internet: ProPublica reports that some websites that sell abortion pills give sensitive personal data to Google. Law enforcement can potentially use this data to prosecute people who end their pregnancies with medication. ProPublica writes:

Online pharmacies that sell abortion pills are sharing sensitive data with Google and other third parties, which may allow law enforcement to prosecute those who use the medications to end their pregnancies, a ProPublica analysis has found.

Using a tool created by the Markup, a nonprofit tech-journalism newsroom, ProPublica ran checks on 11 online pharmacies that sell abortion medication to reveal the web tracking technology they use. Late last year and in early January, ProPublica found web trackers on the sites of at least nine online pharmacies that provide pills by mail: Abortion Ease, BestAbortionPill.com, PrivacyPillRX, PillsOnlineRX, Secure Abortion Pills, AbortionRx, Generic Abortion Pills, Abortion Privacy and Online Abortion Pill Rx.

The time is coming when forced birthers are going to get laws passed that criminalize the pregnant woman. The current restraining belief is that the woman is not guilty of anything, but anyone who aids in an abortion is criminally liable. Once the urge for God's righteous vengeance punches through this already weakening mental restraint, pregnant women themselves will be zealously hunted down and punished harshly. 

That is Christian theocracy serving us lovingly but righteously, so to speak. /s

Abortion information and disinformation; COVID update

 Combatting abortion disinformation: In a brilliant piece of journalism, a NYT article strikes into the heart of a vicious, decades-long disinformation campaign by forced birthers. They have successfully used emotion-provoking disinformation to dissuade many pregnant women from getting an abortion. This is the kind of fetus-oriented imagery that forced birthers routinely use to deceive and dissuade:

About 80% of abortions are done by week nine of a pregnancy. What the fetal tissue actually looks like at week 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 is shown below, left to right, top center to bottom right. There is no discernable, innocent little body to be seen because no such thing had developed by week nine. The top left image is uterine tissue, not fetus. This is what ~80% of abortions look like. This is not the kind of inconvenient information that forced birthers would ever show to a pregnant woman.

Now, compare the week 8 fetal tissue (center of lower row) with the image below of what forced birthers show the fetus allegedly looks like at week 8:

See the difference? This exemplifies the vicious, morally rotted tactics that forced birthers routinely rely on to deceive and dissuade. With infallible God is on the forced birther side, lies, deceit and guilt built on lies and deceit are good and proper. What a bunch of shameless, morally bankrupt liars. 

What was the reaction to the publication of the real photos? Lots of people, including some pro-abortion advocates thought they were faked. The NYT commented:

The Guardian published our first photos on Oct. 19; they went viral, appearing in media outlets and getting shared widely on social media.

Many people, even those who support abortion rights, did not believe the photos were accurate. Some insisted we had deliberately removed the embryos before taking the photos. The images weren’t consistent with those often seen in embryological textbooks, magnified on ultrasounds or used in anti-abortion propaganda; these enlarged images are not what you see with the naked eye after an abortion. A Stanford gynecologic pathologist has validated our photos, but many people could not believe the pictures were presented unaltered.  

We weren’t surprised by the vitriol. We knew we’d face pushback. While we have long felt comfortable showing our patients the pregnancy tissue after an abortion, we went through serious consideration before making the images public on our website. We did not want our message to undermine our unequivocal support for patients who make this decision at later stages when there is a visible embryo or fetus.

This shows, once again, just how powerful and effective a sustained, well-funded dark free speech campaign really can be. Actual medical professionals put out accurate information, but sustained propaganda has undermined trust in doctors and even convenient truth. Even people who just want the truth are blindsided and derailed by forced birther deceit and emotional manipulation. 

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A flash of common sense about COVID: The WaPo reports that the FDA experienced a flash of common sense:

FDA proposes switching to annual coronavirus vaccine, mimicking flu model

 

The Food and Drug Administration is proposing a crucial change in the way the coronavirus vaccine is handled: Switching to a once-a-year shot that targets the strain expected to pose the greatest threat during the following winter — a system akin to what is used for the influenza vaccine.

It was obvious to me over a year ago that this is exactly what needs to be done to deal with COVID for the long term. That it took this long for experts to see something this blatantly obvious is troubling to say the least.  

Biden world giddy at MTG, Gosar, and Boebert being placed on Oversight

 Is this for real? 😮

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/18/biden-world-celebrates-gop-oversight-picks-00078447

Consider:

House Republicans’ installation of some of their most incendiary conservatives on the Oversight Committee is sparking an unexpected feeling inside the White House: unbridled glee.

The panel tasked with probing Biden policies and actions, as well as the president’s own family, will be stocked with some of the chamber’s biggest firebrands and die-hard Trumpists — including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) — ideal figureheads for a White House eager to deride the opposition party as unhinged.

“[W]ith these members joining the Oversight Committee,” White House oversight spokesperson Ian Sams said in a statement, “it appears that House Republicans may be setting the stage for divorced-from-reality political stunts, instead of engaging in bipartisan work on behalf of the American people.”

Democrats haven’t yet named their members to the top House investigative committees, but they’re already confident the Republican-led panels will self-destruct.

“The more unserious people performing congressional oversight the easier this is going to be for the [Biden] administration. And in that regard I think the White House hit the jackpot. This is a crowd that will make [former House Oversight chair] Darrell Issa look intellectual.”

OK OK, not everyone is that excited, as noted:

 The jubilation was tempered, somewhat, by Democrats on the Hill who expressed more apprehension about the posting.

Predictions? Will these investigations actually help Biden? Or will they hurt? Are Republicans overplaying their hand? Or hitting all the right notes? 

Decisions, decisions…

Are you a “one-issue above all” voter?  Many people are. For example:

• The religious often vote strictly on the abortion issue.
• Gun advocates often vote strictly on more lax gun laws. 
• Health professionals often vote strictly on medical issues (prescription costs, universal healthcare, etc.). 
• Gay people often vote strictly on more sexual equality rights.
• PeTA members often vote strictly for the candidate who promotes animal rights.
• Etc.

So…

1. What are your political issues? 
2. Does one issue trump all others? 
3. How do you reconcile your vote if your potential candidate has some views that match yours, and others that do not?  What factor is the “clincher/decider” for you to give them your vote?

Thanks for favoriting and posting.