Happy New Year

They look worried, don't they? Probably hating the ubiquitous fireworks.

Omicron

The year is almost over and I find the current state pretty scary.

I'm thinking of COVID. Yes, I have my 2 vaccine shots and the booster, but ... Real-world data from the U.K. showed that efficacy of a third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine waned significantly at the 10-week mark, leaving boosted individuals at risk of infection with Omicron. COVID Vaccine Booster Efficacy Against Infection May Fade Quickly

And the latest advice from the CDC about people who are infected going back to work in 5 days instead of 10 (with no negative test required) ... well, is not the greatest advice if you really are trying to shut down transmission - COVID isolation cuts priotizes business over health, say scientists

And if we do all get infected with Omicron, and that seems increasingly inevitable, at least 50% of us will probably get Long Covid, which can damage so many organs and systems, including our brains ... Vaccinated Isn’t Enough: Omicron Carries the Risk of Long Covid

Why have we not considered a 4th booster, as Israel has? Why are the CDC and the government prioritizing the economy over our health? Why won't people face up to their responsibility to each other and get vaccinated, wear masks, socially distance? People are dying. To most of us, that apparently doesn't matter anymore, as long as we can still party like it's 1999.

:)

RIP: Desmond Tutu

Sad to see that the Anglican Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, Desmond Tutu, has passed away.

He was a staunch defender of human rights, and animal rights too (We Must Fight Injustice To Animals).

And he had a long and close friendship with the Dalai Lama :) ...



Sad that he is gone.

The Bishop's Wife

Lovng kindness, warm hearts, and the stretched out hand of tolerance - all the shining gifts that make peace on earth.

Watching my favorite Christmas movie, The Bishop's Wife ...

a 1947 Samuel Goldwyn romantic comedy feature film directed by Henry Koster and starring Cary Grant, Loretta Young, and David Niven. The plot is about an angel who helps a bishop with his problems. The film was adapted by Leonardo Bercovici and Robert E. Sherwood from the 1928 novel of the same name by Robert Nathan.

It's free to stream now at Amazon if you have Prime. I'd post a trailer, but apparently, one was never made :) ...

Bing and Frank

At the dawn of history, when I was six :) ...



... from Happy Holidays with Bing and Frank, Dec. 20, 1957, an episode of The Frank Sinatra Show.

PS ... am I the only one who finds it creepy that Santa Claus can see you when you're sleeping?

On the rise

The Republicans celebrate a murderer, and threaten Dr. Fauci's life. Sometimes I feel like I'm watching the rise of Naziism in 30s Germany, but we just go on treating them as of all of this was normal.

Vicky update

Vicky is still a prisoner in my mom's room. You can see in the photo how his head hair, which they trimmed closely, still hasn't grown back much yet. We visited the vet a little over a week ago and he said Vicky's wound is almost all the way healed, but did not want us to let him out yet. We have another appointment in a little over a week.

I'm actually dreading deciding what to do with Vicky once he is better. Yoda is very upset that Vicky is inside and I'm afraid they will get in fights if I let Vicky stay in. But if he goes outside, Timmy will probably beat him up again - this is the third time we have had to take Vicky to the vet after Timmy has woulned him. Also, I'm just pretty overwhelmed with what are now 15 cats. Arghhhhh!

New video

A new music video of George Harrison's My Sweet Lord, featuring many famous people, most of whom I didn't recognize (I am too old!). But I did, of course, like seeing Mark Hamill, Ringo, Weird Al Yankovic, Jeff Lynne, Joe Walsh, Taika Waititi, Olivia and Dhani Harrison, etc.

Here's the blurb ...

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of George Harrison's classic solo album, All Things Must Pass is celebrated with a suite of new releases including a stunning new mix of the classic album by Grammy Award-winning mixer/engineer Paul Hicks, overseen by executive producer Dhani Harrison.

I believe ...

I feel uncomfortable sometimes when I write about women's reproductive rights here - you know, contraception and abortion. We all know I'm pro-choice, but I'm not sure people understand why I am. I've been accused by some of being pro-choice because I myself must have had one or more abortions. That's not true - I have never had an abortion. I've always used contraception, it always worked, and pregnancy was never an issue for me.

I am pro-choice because I'm a feminist. I grew up this way. My mom took us to the doc when we were in high school to get contraception. When I was in college, I had a part-ime job at the school's health center and was turned on to books like Our Bodies, Ourselves ...



And later, I ended up being a volunteer at the local Planned Parenthood, answering contraception questions on the phones, and working in the vasectomy clinic. To me, abortion was just another aspect of women's reproductive health care. I knew there were people against it ... in the 90s, there was a lot of anti-abortion violence ... but I never knew anyone personally who seemed to care about it until I became a Catholic.

A thought experiment. Imagine you work alone in a lab. There are frozen human embryos in the fridge ...

And also there's a cage of white mice on the table ...

A fire starts and you only have time to save either the embryos or the mice, not both. Which would you save?

I would save the mice, because they would be scared and they would suffer horribly if they burned to death. The embryos have no brains, no hearts, no consciousness - they wouldn't be scared, they wouldn'tsuffer. They are not "persons" in the same way mice are.

I asked a Catholic friend about this and he said he would save the embryos. Because they were human. And he believed human life is sacred and must be preserved.

I'm pretty skeptical about this reason. Many religious people are for the death penalty, for war, for gun-toting, and for dooming social services that save lives.

And the Bible ... God doesn't seem to have a lot of respect for human life himself. How many died in the great flood, in Moses' Egypt, in Sodom and Gomorrah? Look at Job - God killed his children. Yes, he later gave him replacemts, but his original children were still dead as doornails. Even in the NT, Ananias and Sapphira were struck dead just for not sharing all their money with the community. Jeez.

While I do recognize that there are some individuals who seem to genuinely care about fetuses, I think the majority of the pro-life movement is being disingenuous. I think they basically want to control women's choices, want to impose their anachronistic views of women's "purpose" on all of our society.

I don't believe they will be successful, even given the reactionaries now on the Supreme Court. Their view is a minority view, even among the religious. Most people believe that women and girls are persons with rights. Most people believe that while fetuses may eventually become persons with rights, they are not persons in the same way women/girls are ... yet.

The texts

Congressman Jason Crow, a former army ranger, discusses the revealed texts of Mark Meadows, Trumpo's former Chief of Staff, which show that Republican congressmen, Fox news hosts, and Trump Jr., among others, asked the Chief of Staff to get Trump to call off his January 6 mob, then attacking the Capitol.

The texts make clear that the writers of the texts all knew Trump had incited the mob, that the intended purpose of the mob was to disrupt the election count, and that only Trump had the power to call off his dogs, so to speak. If a foreign actor had done this, people would be calling for his imprisonment, at the very least.

RIP: Deloney

I learned today that a friend from the past, Deloney, had passed away earlier this year. I got to know him when I joined the online writing community, Writer's BBS, about 20 years ago. He was a poet and cat owner, and a very kind person. The last time I heard from him, he had told me of a song by Leonard Cohen: Song of Bernadette ...

Song of Bernadette

There was a child named Bernadette
I heard the story long ago
She saw the queen of heaven once
And kept the vision in her soul
No one believed what she had seen
No one believed what she heard
But there were sorrows to be healed
And mercy, mercy in this world


So many hearts I find, broke like yours and mine
Torn by what we have done and can't undo
I just want to hold you, won't you let me hold you
Like Bernadette would do


We've been around, we fall, we fly
We mostly fall, we mostly run
And every now and then we try
To mend the damage that we've done
Tonight, tonight I just can't rest
I've got this joy inside my breast
To think that I did not forget
that child
That song of Bernadette


So many hearts I find, broke like yours and mine
Torn by what we've done and can't undo
I just want to hold you, won't you let me hold you
Like Bernadette would do

Happy Trails

From the time that Trump ran for president and won the election, I have been watching The 11th Hour with Brian Williams ....

the program focused primarily on the actions of the presidency of Donald Trump and Williams leads each broadcast noting the number of days since the Trump presidency began, as well as how many days remain before it ends.

That program helped me stay sane during those horrible nightmare years. Now Brian Williams is retiring. He will be missed!

Too Much

It's the holiday season and as usual I feel at loose ends, with too much time on my hands ...

In the yard

Mouse keeps me company ...

While I rake leaves ...

Politics Girl

The idea of “real Americans” and “fake Americans” is pure propaganda. The idea that you can just be “over” a virus because you wanna be is pure idiocy. Both fit squarely into the Jim Jordan wheelhouse. pic.twitter.com/xtzjO5PBvO

— PoliticsGirl (@IAmPoliticsGirl) December 3, 2021

The stench

Listening to the oral arguments before the Supreme Court on the Mississippi abortion ban. Justice Sotomayor said ....

The newest ban that Mississippi has put in place, the six-week ban, the Senate sponsor said we're doing it because we have new Justices the Supreme Court. Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?

The short answer is NO.

Many of the conservative Justices ... especially Kavanaugh and Barrett ... revealed themselves to be liars, as they contradicted the falsehoods they told Congress at their confirmation hearings about respecting stare decisis in the case of Roe v Wade: today they couldn't wait to ditch the idea of legal precedent.

I don't know what will happen but it is obvious that the Trump Justices, along with the other conservatives on the Court, want to get rid of women's constitutional right to reproductive choice. They are unswayed by the negative effect it will have on women, of course. All that matters is that they can force their religous minority opinion (most Christians, even most Catholics, want abortion to remain legal) on the whole country.

People will die. And I'm speaking here of actual persons ... women and girls ... not embryos and zygotes. But then, conservatives have made stepping on women their life's work, so we shouldn't be surprised.

Poll: As Supreme Court hears Mississippi case, just 24% of Americans want Roe v. Wade overturned