Lost Sense of Reality                                                                       #240

By Hank Silverberg 

I have a question for anyone who considers themselves a Republican. What does your party stand for?

I doubt they would be able to answer. Two items this week are perfectly illustrative of that.

Let's start with South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, a single man with no children from a southern "State's Rights" state, who now wants the federal government to outlaw abortion.

He has proposed a bill that would ban all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy with exceptions for rape, incest or an imminent threat to the mother's life. 

This comes after he and his party have argued for years that abortions should be regulated by the individual states and just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, allowing that to happen. 

Clearly, Graham is out of touch with the majority of the population and way out in right field.  An Associated Press poll done in July found 60% of the public in favor of Congress passing a law guaranteeing ACCESS to legal abortion nationwide. 

https://apnews.com/article/abortion-health-congress-government-and-politics-fc8c68d1c4dd29ef0a364050013b8cf4

It's unlikely any federal legislation on abortion will happen with the mid-term elections looming, or even after November. 

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has already distanced himself and most of his GOP colleagues, from Graham's bill. He is still calling it an issue for each individual state.   

It will take a landslide victory in November for one party or the other for any national abortion bill to pass. Such a landslide is highly unlikely.

The second issue that makes it clear Republicans have lost touch with reality, and really can't see what's happening in communities across the country, deals with immigration. 

(The island is 8 miles off coast of Cape Cod)

This past week Texas Governor Greg Abbott teamed up with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in a cruel stunt surrounding illegal immigrants from Venezuela.  Abbot had those immigrants who had crossed the border into Texas put on a plane supplied by Florida and flown to Washington D.C. and Martha's Vinyard off the Massachusetts coast. The D.C. passengers were then bused to the Vice President's home at the Naval Observatory on Massachusetts Avenue and left there. 

Those immigrants were lied to. They were lured onto the plane after being told there was housing and jobs waiting for them at the end of the flight. There was nothing of the kind. And local officials in D.C. and Martha's Vineyard were not even told the immigrants were coming. 

Governor Abbot is in a tough re-election run against Democrat Beto O'Rourke, and DeSantis, who is also facing a tough re-election challenge from former Governor Charlie Crist, is also getting ready for a run for the White House. 

The stunt gave them big media coverage that appealed to the right wing of their party. But it may backfire in the end.  The move caught the Massachusetts governor, another Republican who is not running for re-election, by surprise as he scrambled to provide help for the 50 immigrants dumped on the island. It did little to highlight the overall immigration problem and made Republicans in general look like monsters.  

The immigrants got immediate help from the folks in Massachusetts and D.C., and Abbot and DeSantis got mostly negative reactions. 

Mid-Term Early Voting

On the subject of voting, the mid-term elections technically begin next week. In-person early voting in my state, Virginia, starts this coming

Friday, September 23rd, if you are already registered to vote. You have until October 17th to register and until October 28th to request an absentee ballot. Election day is November 8th.

Every state is different, so if you want to vote early or by mail, you should check with your own state. This link will take you to a website where you can check the details in your own state: 

 https://www.vote.org/early-voting-calendar/ 

With all the talk about election fraud two years ago, fraud which never happened, please make sure you have an I-D with you so there is no doubt you are who you say you are in case someone in your area is trying to suppress your vote. It's not required in all states, but it's the quickest way to shut down a challenge. 

I plan to vote early, but probably not on the first day of early voting. Some people worry that something will happen right before election day that could change their minds and hold off casting their ballot until then. That's fine. Just make sure you vote. It never mattered more than it does this year. You can expect me to remind you more than once in this blog. 

The End of The Political Debate?

The one thing you won't see much of between now and November 8th are political debates. Televised debates have been a staple of campaigns since the Nixon-Kennedy confrontation in 1960 when much of the country was glued to their seat to watch. Seventy million was a lot of viewers in those days.

But now, more and more candidates, mostly Republicans, are refusing to do such debates. In many cases it may be their anger at mainstream media since Donald Trump's infamous claim that the media is the "enemy of the people." Or it may be they just don't want to defend the big lie that the former president has spread since 2020 about election fraud. Some have called the debates "political theatre," which it can become at times. For Democrats the issue is simpler. They don't want to share the stage with anyone who espouses the election fraud lie, or many other conspiracy theories that seem to be pushed by a large number of Republicans these days.  

What all this means is that the voters will be less informed and getting much of their information on candidates from distorted and polarized social media. The mainstream press--like newspapers and local TV and broadcast network news--will try to cover the candidates. But many voters just aren't tuned in. 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/18/the-end-of-the-debate-republicans-midterms

Democracy dies in darkness. Do us all a favor and pay attention to what your local candidates are saying. If you don't it could cost us all in the long run. Votes count. 

Applause For the Local Sheriff    

Here in the place where I live, Spotsylvania County, Virgnia, there is a running dispute on the school board. The Board, which is supposed to be

non-partisan, took a radical turn to the right in the last election when conservatives became the majority. They have since fired a popular school superintendent, tried to ban some books from school libraries, and have appointed some folks to jobs for which they were not qualified. The latest is a new superintendent with no public-school education experience. He even homeschooled his own children. The decision to make him the superintendent appears to be based only on the man's personal connections to the school board chairman, rather than qualifications. The school board attorney resigned in all the bedlam.  

Needless to say, the public, including many parents, educators and students, have been a bit upset by all this, and some of the recent school board meetings have been heated. There have been loud speeches and at times, strong raucous reaction from the public to what have been very unpopular decisions.

The Sheriff's Department had been providing some security to keep things in order, but the school board leadership has a pretty warped view of "order." 

Several speakers, who loudly and vehemently expressed their opposition to the board's actions were escorted out of the meetings by Sheriff's deputies at the request of members of the board, most notably Kirk Twigg, the chairman. In some cases, they were forced to leave while they were still within their allotted speaking time.     

Now, the County Sheriff, Roger Harris, says his department will no longer provide security. He says the morale of his deputies over the past several months has decreased because they were asked to do things that are obviously a violation of the First Amendment.   

In a letter to the board, Harris wrote:  

“Our deputies on numerous occasions have been put in a position to side with one or more members, regarding ‘disruptive’ citizens.”

Sheriff Harris, who is also elected to his job, did say his department would still respond to "any emergency situation. " 

Kudos to the Sheriff who knows loud speech, even screaming at a public meeting, is free speech, not criminal behavior. Good for you, Sheriff. We'd much rather see those deputies out on the street going after criminals than functioning as Twigg's "thought police."  

Twigg's second term ends in 2024. So does the Sheriff's. 

I am not sure how all this will turn out, but I am very glad my grandkids do not live in the Spotsylvania School District. 

Good schools are a must to attract business, spur the local economy, and a must to keep the local economy healthy. The Spotsylvania School Board seems to be headed in the wrong direction. 

Dumbest Quote of the Week!

This week's dumbest quote comes from who else, but Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. He was asked by a reporter how he can use Florida taxpayer money to take people from Texas and fly them somewhere else. He said the illegal immigrants were intending to come to Florida anyway (no proof of that), and the planes Floridians paid for are just taking the illegal immigrations to a "sanctuary" jurisdiction:

"...but the issue is, if you want to do it effectively, you just can't police, if you have two people in a car and there's a hundred different cars that come in a different week because it looks like your car or anyone else's and so we put a lot of emphasis in this. There's been a lot of investigation to try and figure out how this is going." 

Of course. This makes no sense at all. He really can't defend his position. If I were a Florida taxpayer, I'd be filing a lawsuit against the Governor for misuse of state funds.  

Entertainment!

From time to time on this blog I have presented some entertainment. And I do so this week with this wonderful song from my friend Dave Berger. 

(Your comments and suggestions are welcome) 

(My book "The Campaign" can be purchased at the links below. Or you can buy a copy by emailing me at:

HankSilverberg@gmail.com for instructions on how to get a copy at a reduced price and with my signature.)                       

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084Q7K6M5/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-campaign-hank-silverberg/1126429796