Mail

At last, my sister and I managed to replace the mailbox post after the last one was run over. We sent away for a couple of kits that you just pounded into the ground, but the ground here by the road was so hard we just couldn't do it. Eventually we made the hole left by the previous post bigger, bought a redwood 4x4, and used quick drying concrete to keep it in place. Then we attached the old indestructible Rubbermaid mailbox to that. My sister did all the hard stuff.

The onerous part will be contacting everyone to change my address. Again. But it will be good to finally have mail delivered instead of having to go to the post office to pick it up.

The Last Ship

The latest tv series I've been renting is The Last Ship ...

an American action-drama television series, loosely based on the 1988 novel of the same name by William Brinkley .... After a global viral pandemic wipes out over 80% of the world's population, the crew (consisting of 218 people) of a lone unaffected U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, the fictional USS Nathan James (DDG-151), must try to find a cure, stop the virus, and save humanity.

One of the reasons I gave it a try, aside from it being post-apocalyptic, was that the executive producer is Michael Bay. His films are often panned by critics, but he is really good at action films and has done two of my past favorites: The Rock and The Island ...





Anyway, The Last Ship is pretty good so far, and weirdly interesting because of our own real-life COVID pandemic. You might like it too.

Evil Woman

I'm stuck here in the kitchen as some worker guys (3) replace part of the floor in the bathroom. Luckily, a County grant is paying for it. It is taking forever! Poor Yoda is hiding in the bedroom.

So menawhile, here is another song from Durch TopPop: Electric Light Orchestra, 1975, Evil Woman ...

Annie's Song

Yes, even more from TopPop, the Dutch music program. I remember this song by John Denver well when it came out in 1974, though this TopPop video was recorded in 1982.

Your Song

Another from TopPop ... Elton John, 1971, filmed in in a wood near Amsterdam, singing his first hit, Your Song ...



I remember when this song came out ... I was 19 ... and I really liked it :)

Killer Queen

More tunes. I found TopPop, a Dutch tv music show from the past, and have been searching it for performers I like. Here's a song, Killer Queen, by Queen, broadcast in 1974 by TopPop ...



Freddie Mercury wrote the song. He always seems to have interesting lyrics ...

Magic Man

Heart, 1976, performing Magic Man on TopPop in the Netherlands.

Bernie

I wish the blue dog Democrats like Joe Manchin would just pass this bill. It's paid for, it's necessary ... Joe, stop sucking up to your wealthy Republican/oil and coal industry donors, and instead help the American people.

Monsters

My sister and I had a very distressing phone call with our step-parents today. They are having a big family gathering soon with people from all over the country (and Bermuda) getting together at their house. All of them, including my step-parents, are unvaccinated. They were really upset when we declined to come to the indoor maskless gathering because they all were not vaccinated.

My step-parents are in their 80s, each with a pile of co-morbidities. They said their doctor told them that if they got vaccinated, it would bring back past cancer. They said that they didn't believe that more than a thousand people were really dying of covid every day .... that's just a lie. They said that if it was their time to die, then that was ok with them.

We tried to inject some facts into the conversation but that just made them angry. They seem to believe that we don't really care about them because we don't want to expose ourselves or them to covid.

If they die of covid, it will be Trump and Fox news and Republican politicians who murdered them, murdered them with their cynical self-serving lies.

9/11

I often see historian Michael Beschloss on the news and like him a lot. So it was interesting to see that now he has his own show on Peacock - Fireside History with Michael Beschloss.

Here is the first episode, “From 9/11 to War” ...

Elvis

Elvis gets the polio vaccine backstage at The Ed Sullivan Show in order to help increase the vaccination rate (1956). ... How Elvis Helped America Eliminate Polio

I remember getting the polio vaccine at school on a sugar cube when I was a little kid. Ah, the olden days, when avoiding a terrible disease was considered a good idea.

Possum

The baby possums are still here. They come out every night to eat the leftover cat food. They are so cute.

Matrix 4

Coming to a theater near you, the fourth installment of The Matrix film series. The first movie of the series (1999) is one of my favorite past movies ... my sister and I often still quote some of the lines from it, like "I know kung fu" :) ...



Anyway, this latest movie looks like it may be good.

The DOJ

As has been the case throughout the history of the pro-life movement, the Texas law is a cheat, a scheme, that aims to deprive women of their constitutional rights by doing an end run around 50 years of precedent.

This DOJ suit will come to the Supreme Court - if the reactionaries on the court uphold the Texas law and effectively overturn Roe, they will not only be out of step with the majority of Americans, they will brand themselves as the clown coirt we knew they would be when Trump appointed Kavanaugh and Barrett.

It's up to Congress now to codify Roe.

More choice

The pro-life movement does not really want to end or lessen abortions. If they wanted to do that, they would champion women's access to contraception, which has been shown to deamaricaaly lower the number of abortions obtained.

And the pro-life moveement knows too that completely outlawing abortion, which is the effective result of banning abortion after 6 weeks of pregnancy, will not actually put an end to abortion - it will just be more difficult and dangerous for women to obtain one.

The point of laws like the one in Texas is to punish women for trying to control their own bodies, and to keep women from having the freedom that men have to make choices about their futures. The aim of the pro-life moovement is not to save fetal life, it's to put women in their place as barefoot and pregnant domestic chattel. That may sound hyperbolic, but it is true that if women are not allowed to decide for themselves when and if they have children, they will never be co-people with men in the world.

It's not just the crazies like Operation Rescue who are part of this, it's also "liberal" Pope Francis, who has said women will never ... never ... be priests in his church, Pope Fracis, whose church continuously works not just against abortion, but against women's access to contraception, both with political lobbying and in their charities and hospitals.

Choice

Pro-lifers and Republicans are like the dog who finally caught the car ... they are going to be so very sorry they did.

Moonshadow

Cat Stevens at the BBC, 1971.

Pete

Pete Buttigieg and husband Chasten announce the birth of their adopted children

Halloween comes early

A creepy ad for the Texas anti-abortion snitch hotline. Full of lies and QAnon crap ("those who worship at the altar of child sacrifice").

Hey, pro-lifers, stop waxing rhapsodic about the 6 week old fetal "heartbeat" .... 6 week old pregnancies are embryos, not fetuses, and they do not yet have hearts or heartbeats (Embryos Don’t Have Hearts).

Let's roll!

Now that the Supreme Court has spoken on the new Texas anti-abortion bounty hunter law, I have some ideas of how we might all benefit from this genius Republican plan for using average citizens as vigilantes ...

- Let's create a law that allows any citizen to sue anyone who is an anti-vaxxer and refuses to get the vaccine. I think there should be a bounty of at least $10,000 a pop ... think of all the lives this might save.

- And let's deputize anyone to sue those people who have more than 2 children. Did you know that the more children one has exponentially increases their carbon footprint? The fires in the west and the flooding in the east should prove to everyone how important addressing climate change is. So let's give a bounty of $15,000 to vigilantes who rat out those so selfish. Think of all the lives that can be saved.

- And let's create a new law that allows any citizen to sue people who own guns. What? Gun ownership is protected by the Constitution? No worries - apparently that doesn't matter anymore. And death from gunshot wounds is horrendous in the US. Perhpas the reward for these suits should be even more, like $20,000. Think of all the lives that might be saved.

This is just the beginning - there's so much more we Democrats can chnge for the better, now that we have been shown the way forward by our Republican friends.

Let's roll!

More

More on the Texas anti-abortion law. The above video does a good job of covering the subject. One thing that was brought up by a guest was the perplexity of Democrat inaction in the face of all the Republicans are doing.

Think of what's been happening, or rather not happening, in Congress and the White House. Democrats have a majority in both houses, and the presidency as well, yet we have no crime bill, no voting rights bill, no codification of Roe v Wade, and no voiced intention to add more jusges to the stacked Supreme Court.

Why not? Because of the blue dog Democrats? Because the Republicans might be mean to us if they ever win again? Holy sh*t, what good is it to have won the majority of the country's votes if the government operates as if Republicans had won instead?

Vigilantes

What The Texas Abortion Ban Does — And What It Means For Other States

[This law] bans abortion as soon as cardiac activity is detectable. That's around six weeks, which is before a lot of people know that they're pregnant. Other states have tried to do this, but those laws have been challenged by abortion-rights groups and blocked by federal courts again and again ....

Anyone who successfully sues an abortion provider under this law could be awarded at least $10,000. And to prepare for that, Texas Right to Life has set up what it calls a "whistleblower" website where people can submit anonymous tips about anyone they believe to be violating the law ....

This law aims to avoid the pitfalls of previous anti-abortion bills/laws that were found unconstitutional by basically turning citizens into bounty hunetrs who will track down people for cash rewards.

This shouldn't be surprising - rabid Republicans are already using vigilantiism to threatern and intimidate school boards who want mask mandates, businesses who ask for vaccine proof, lawmakers who support bills they don't like, etc. Republican voters have become their party's version of the Brownshirts, trying to enforce their draconian politics with implied and actial violence.

Gee, I thought Republicans were now all about "my body, my choice".