KGO was saying this morning that there’s a small but real chance that the snow level will drop to ground level during this weekend’s storms. Wow. It almost NEVER snows here.
And I for one haven’t seen snow in years. I miss it. I hope we get some!
Blood In The Water
Scott and I were chatting tonight, and he must have noticed the distinct lack of happiness in my voice, because he asked me what was wrong.
“This“, I said.
“I can’t believe we have to do this all over again. It’s one thing to fight for rights you don’t already have, but I hate it that now we have to go out and fight for rights we’ve already got,” I said.
“They don’t consider it over until they’ve won, honey,” he said. “They started fighting with Roe and they’ve kept on fighting, and they’re going to keep it up until they’ve gotten rid of Roe.”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “You’re right. But I still hate it.”
Digby is of a similar mind.
They really mean it. This is no bullshit. There is no downside to overturning Roe for them — and if there is, they don’t care. If they want to overturn Griswald, they’ll do that too. They fought the gun control fight when people were freaking out over crime in the streets and political assassinations. Conservative absolutists don’t give up just because liberals get up-in-arms.
[snip]
But more than anything else we must accept the fact that these people are serious. They want to outlaw abortion and they want to curtail people’s access to birth control. They aren’t lying. And as they’ve shown with gun rights, they are in it for the long haul. We must be just a stubborn as they are and seek to wear them down rather than let them wear us down.
Digby and Scott are right. We need to fight. The Right is smelling blood in the water on all aspects of women’s reproductive self-determination, and they think they are closing in for the kill. We cannot let that happen.
Still, I want to note how much it completely sucks that we have to go back and fight this battle All. Over. Again.
Once should have been enough.
Scary Stuff
Orcinus has a post up today about the frightening levels that Holocaust deniers go to try to harass and intimidate people who stand up to them.
Fire bombings, death threats, and more. And all this in America.
On a related note, a Hong Kong based banker I know recently reported that he:
Was in the Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) Airport earlier today, and was in the bookstore looking for something to read on the plane when a I stumble across The International Jew by Henry Ford packaged with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Lovely. Those books, or books very much like them, are sold in not a few Muslim-focused bookstores, but I’m a little taken aback that they’re so mainstream as to make it into the airport bookshop.
Thursday Cat Blogging: Two Cats In The Light
Still learning how to get the most out of the new camera. Here, there’s almost too much flash, but at least you can clearly see the color difference between Bear and Gimi as they hang out next to my desk.
Note how much bigger Bear has gotten. He’s really not a kitten anymore. *sigh* They grow up so fast.
He’s still sweet and affectionate, though.
Coffee Across America
For a happier change of pace, I’d pulled this piece from USA Today about great places for coffee around the USA.
Bay View Farm
Honaunau, HawaiiCaffe Dante and Caffe Reggio
New YorkCaffe Trieste
San FranciscoPeet’s
BerkeleyZoka
SeattleNews Cafe
Miami BeachStumptown Coffee Roasters
PortlandIntelligentsia Coffee Roasters
ChicagoCaf
Don’t Become That Which You Hate
I’ve said this before, but something in a comment thread over at Shakes’ place got me going enough to want to say it again.
Thread commenter Eric said:
once Roe is overturned, you are going to see a profound shift in the political landscape as women realize that their own civil, and reproductive, rights are being supressed by male legislatures. The Democrats will then have a strong rallying cry, and perhaps an infusion of support by women as they realize the difficulties, hardships, and dangers of back ally abortions.
Overturning Roe will be the turning point in the destruction of the religious wing-nut’s power over the Republican Party.
This attitude infuriates me. It is just as odious an argument for progressives to make as it is for the wingnuts who sit safely behind their keyboards, cheering on the Iraq war. The bottom line for both types is: It’s all good as long as someone else does the dying.
Progressive who argue this line of reasoning are generally sitting safely in deep-blue states or are financially well-off in red states. The only reason they consider the overturn of Roe to be an acceptable turn of events is because they assume that they will be able to insulate themselves from the casualties.
My question to them is: How many deaths do you consider to be “acceptable losses” before it happens?
And a few follow-ups: What if it was not some anonymous women in Red states who had to do the dying for Roe? Are you willing to let your wife / daughters / sisters / cousins / friends be the ones who have to bleed out on their kitchen floors or die from massive infections? And if you’re not, then why are those other women’s lives expendable?
In short, isn’t that the exact thing we’re fighting against?