Compromise

Watching Meet the Press. As Democrats do better than expected in special elections because of the issue of abortion, some Republican politicians are trying to moderate their messaging on the subject, backing away from total bans on and criminalization of abortion. Now they are bringing up compromise ... maybe a 15 week cut-off and a ban on late term abortions.

The Republicans are lying, of course: they don't want to compromise. A compromise was what Roe v Wade was. Now it is way too late for either side to compromise, even if Republicans really did want to.

Extinction

Nearly every marine species will be at risk of extinction within 78 years if greenhouse gas emissions are not limited, study finds

How can anyone vote for Republican politicians when they continue to pretend that climate change doesn't exist?

Dr. Fauci

We were so lucky to have someone as brilliant and ethical as Dr. Fauci to help us through COVID.

Then & now

Electric Light Orchestra, then (1975) ...



And now (2017) ...

Vicky

If you expand the photo, you can see Vicky the cat napping, still a prisoner in my mom's bedroom (for 10 months!). Hope we can find a home for him.

Disease

Another spreading disease. Great. I'm pessimistic about this one ... Monkeypox Can Survive for Weeks in Water and on Refrigerated Food and Monkeypox virus can linger on common household items, shows US govt study

And then there's polio .... eeeeeeek!

Acorns

Get Back

This week's movie rental was The Beatles: Get Back ...

a 2021 documentary series directed and produced by Peter Jackson. It covers the making of the Beatles' 1970 album Let It Be (which had the working title of Get Back) and draws largely from unused footage and audio material originally captured for the identically titled 1970 documentary of the album by Michael Lindsay-Hogg. The docuseries has a total runtime of nearly eight hours, consisting of three episodes between two and three hours, each covering roughly weekly periods of 21 days of studio time ...

Here's a review: The Beatles – Get Back review: Peter Jackson documentary is a seven-hour masterpiece

I've only seen the first disk so far, which ends when George Harrison, upset with how he is being treated, quits the band. Yoko is there every minute, it seems, but also visiting are Paul's wife Linda and Ringo's wife Maureen. I noticed a couple of things. One was the way Paul easily created songs out of thin air, on the fly. The other was how unhappy George seemed, and how often he mentioned his friend Eric Clapton.

A couple of clips ...





I'm looking forward to the next 2 disks.

Star Trek

The latest books I've been reading are in a series ... Star Trek Autobiographies

The first one I read was The Autobiography of James T. Kirk, which I wrote about here back in 2017: The Autobiography of James T. Kirk . It was pretty good.

Since then I have read The Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway, and right now I'm reading The Autobiography of Mr. Spock: The Life of a Federation Legend

If you are a fan of the original Star Trek, you may well like the books. I thought the first one, the one about Captain Kirk, has been the best.

Trees

I've been thinking about trees. Many of our trees have been struggling and some have died because of the drought. Very sad. I wanted to get some new trees but they're pretty expensive, so I looked for free ones.

It turns out that our electric company gives people free trees to help cut energy costs. I had to apply and have a virtual meeting with a county forrester, and she decided I could have three trees - yay!

They had a number of trees to choose from and I picked ones that were fast growing and drought tolerant ...

- An interior live oak for the side yard ...

- A trident maple for the back yard ...

- And my favorite, based on its name, the bibba desert Willow for the frontt yard ...

They will probably just be little twigs when they first arrive. I hope my black thimb doesn't kill them off before they grow up.

Here is the tree map the forrester gave me, showing where to plant the new trees. Not really up to date, as the tarps still seem to be on the roofs ...

Heh

Dash

A new cat has appeared in the yard. I was hoping he was just visiting but he has really moved in. The other cats don't like him much but at least he's not as bad as Timmy the Terrible was. We've named him Dash, after the character in The Lost City :) ...



And here is Inky. She has been visiting here lately but always goes back to where she lives ...

Here she is again with her friend Mango, who comes with her to visit. They both have tipped ears, so they're spayed/neutered, which is a relief ...

And here's Olive. He's not very happy about all these newish cats ...

The comments

From The Washington Post ...

Catholic bishops spent big on Kansas abortion vote — and maybe lost bigger

[...] Analysts were quick to frame the result [of the Kansas abortion vote] as a setback for the antiabortion movement, but activists and experts say it also amounts to a rejection of the Catholic Church hierarchy, which had shelled out massive sums of money in support of the amendment’s passage. The vote may hint, too, at a mounting backlash against the church’s involvement in the nation’s abortion debate — not least among Catholics themselves.

[...]

According to financial disclosures and media reports, the Kansas City Archdiocese spent roughly $2.45 million on the effort this year, with the Catholic dioceses of Wichita and Salina together spending an additional $600,000 or more. Some individual Catholic parishes across the state chipped in, as did the Kansas Catholic Conference, an advocacy group tied to the state’s bishops, which reportedly spent $100,000. Separately, the conservative advocacy group CatholicVote raised around $500,000 for the pro-amendment Do Right PAC, according to the news outlet Flatland.

[...]

The church officially decries abortion, but U.S. Catholics, generally supportive of legal abortion, have grown more liberal on the issue over time: According to a recent PRRI poll, the percentage of White Catholics who believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases jumped from 53 percent in October 2010 to 64 percent by June of this year. The shift among Hispanic Catholics was even more dramatic, from 51 percent in 2010 to 75 percent in June ....

There's a post too at America Magazine about the Kansas vote ...

It was at the top of the magazine right after the vote, but now it seems to have disappeared, but you can find it here ... Abortion win in Kansas was a wake-up call for the pro-life movement.

The article was pretty disingenuous and what one would expect from pro-life professro Charles C. Camosy, but what was surprising even to me was the tone of the comments from readers. There were 115 and counting today when I looked, and almost all of them are pro-choice, and many are angry at the church's stance on abortion. Check them out.

Lobbying

* Follow the money: Who is funding Kansas abortion amendment ads?

Catholic churches, conferences and affiliated organizations funded nearly two-thirds of the $5.4 million spent by the Value Them Both campaign in 2022, and gave the campaign nearly three-fourths of all the money it raised this year. Unlike with partisan political candidates, federal tax regulations allow churches to donate to and campaign on ballot measures. Of the nearly $3.5 million funneled to the campaign by Catholic donors this year, $2.45 million came from the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas. The archdiocese is the largest single donor to either campaign.

* Millions in Advertising Help Shape Closely Watched Abortion Vote in Kansas

Value Them Both reported raising $2.45 million in 2022 from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese in Kansas City, Kan., and $550,000 from the Catholic Diocese of Wichita, accounting for a majority of the group’s cash donations this year.

Hah!

Kansas votes to protect abortion rights in state constitution

Kansans secured a huge win for abortion rights in the US on Tuesday night when they voted to continue to protect abortion in the state constitution ...

That this would happen in Kansas, a red state which was once the home of the notorious anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, is a sign that Republicans and religious extremists will *not* be able to drag the country backwards in time.