Tag: #SCOTUS

  • USA’s History of Vaccines

    So, the more that I read, the more that I am coming to the realization that 30% to 40% of this nation just won’t get vaccinated. I really wish this wasn’t true, because I do think that creating the Covid vaccines, manufacturing them, and get it distributed around this country, and now the world, is actually an amazing feat of humanity’s ingenuity. But still, people, for a great number of reasons, won’t get vaccinated.

    The more I think about this, I wonder, why there is this anti-vax contingent of our nation, when 70 to 80 years ago, people got vaccinated in high numbers, close to 90%? In fact, so many people got the measles vaccine in the 60’s, that the disease was virtually eradicated in America. Looking more into the history of this country, when it comes to vaccines, sadly, we have always had some of the lowest rates of inoculation. Especially at the start of the 20th century, even though in 1905 the Supreme Court upheld compulsory vaccination laws in the case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts. Things really didn’t change in the country until vaccine laws were enforced after World War II.

    Before I read this information today, I had created this theory in my head that all the people who lived in the world before antibiotics, and mass vaccines have passed on, so there is no collective memory of what that world was like. That we are the spoiled children of history, because we don’t know what a world without effective and predictable healthcare is like.

    And that theory is wrong.

    The fact is that Americas won’t get vaccinated unless a law is passed and they have to.

    USA! USA! USA!

  • Internet is Out

    So… when our internet went out today, yes, everything grounds to a halt. I’m on my phone writing this, and it feels like I have been defeated by the tech Gods.

    The wife needed to work, the kid needed to go to school, and I wanted to use today pushing people to help Flip the Senate. None of that happened.

    Yeah, I’m pretty annoyed. I had a plan for today and it all went to shit fast. This was supposed to be a test first day at making a change. I got all fired up over the weekend with the passing of RBG. I was ready to get into good trouble.

    Now I have to wait a day… The Revolution will be streamed later…

  • Oh, Brett

    I can’t help but wonder what is going through the head of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh?

    If he’s innocent, I do feel a little bad for him.

    If he did it, then he’s going to get what he deserves. (If you aren’t sure, this is what I am talking about.)

    This story so touches a nerve with me. Though I am a white male in America, outside of that, I do not see any similarity with Brett. If anything, he is emblematic to me of how screwed up America is right now.

    Though I was not born into a well-connected family or got to go to cool places for Summer vacation, or even could get away with behaving “badly” and have it chocked up as “boys being boys.”

    There is a part of me that believes Brett when he says he has no memory of the events he’s being accused of. It’s not that he was too drunk. It’s because why would he need to remember those moments?

    When you think you sit on top of the world, then you start to believe that everyone wants to be like you. Brett was having fun, and everyone around him was having fun, right? If we are all having fun, and fun is good, then nothing bad is happening. Thus, those moments were inconsequential, and thus forgettable.

    And I saw those actions in high school, and even in college. I saw the reactions, and the impossibility to convince that guy that his “joking around” was actually hurtful. To that guy, everything was taking from hi perspective, because we all want to be him, right?

  • That Judge Thing

    The Republicans have made a deal with the devil to get Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court. This is the gross world we live in, but there is just about nothing that could have happened yesterday that would have stopped his approval. The goal has been five conservative votes on the court, and it didn’t matter how it happened, but the Republicans will do anything to get the five votes. And that’s the goal post in all of this. And they will get it. Public opinion be damned.

    And that is the calculation in all of this that I just don’t understand. That fifth vote will cost them in the midterms. And then it will cost them in 2020. This may even go on to 2022 and 2024 if major cases are over turned. It makes the Court an issue for years to come.

    But what I really don’t get is that the Republicans have shot themselves in the foot for the next generation of women, if not the one following. For most girls in high school, Dr. Ford looked like their mother, and they just watched as a political party say that her honesty and suffering mean nothing compared to the destiny of a man to be on the Supreme Court. This will last. I know this to be a fact because I was in high school during the Hill/Thomas hearings, and it was clear that a smart intelligent, successful woman amounted to nothing compared to a man. These are the women that are running for office now because they have seen this shit happen before, they have experienced this shit happening to them or their friends, and here we are, doing it all over again. Men will not solve this problem, only women can and will. And why is the Republican party deciding that it is worth alienating just about all women in this country?

    Women the age of Dr. Ford won’t vote Republican. Their daughters won’t. And what makes you think that they won’t teach their sons and daughter to not trust Republican’s in the future.