The Books of Bokonon

The Florida governor dictator has been working like madness to kill a ballot initiative that has already been given the go-ahead and which is already on actual ballots, weeks before election day. He is desperate to keep that 6-week abortion ban in place. It's the same ban Trump supports. The tactics Desantis uses are disturbing and anti-democratic: sending secret police to ballot initiative signatories, threatening media outlets that run ads in favor of the initiative, and even cooking up an excuse to invalidate any votes for the initiative. Read more here . What we are witnessing in Florida as is the case in other GOP dominated parts of the US is best understood as follows: GOP politicians don't care about the give and take that comes with governing. They want raw power to rule, period.

I'll offer a few videos that go into a few facets of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 document. I will keep the focus on city planning as well as women's rights, but let's be aware that this is an expansive document that would fundamentally alter American life in a way that would harm the average citizen.  Let's start with CityNerd. His focus in the video below is primarily on urban transportation, which is crucial. He also does take a moment to get into some of the bigger picture stuff about how federal agencies would be run by partisan hacks rather than staffed by professionals who actually understand their jobs. He also reminds us that Trump implemented the Heritage Foundation's agenda for him quite faithfully: 64% of its proposals ended up becoming policy. He also takes some time rebutting critics of his Project 2025 videos: Here's another video done in the style of Schoolhouse Rock (for any of us who remember growing up on that): And here is anoth...

Propublica has a detailed story of a mother who was in desperate need of a procedure that would have saved her life. Why didn't the hospital do its job? Its hands were tied by a strict abortion ban. She left behind her six-year-old son. The whole story is worth reading. It turns out that our current culture war has real flesh-and-blood casualties. Just to clue you in: Thurman’s case marks the first time an abortion-related death, officially deemed “preventable,” is coming to public light. ProPublica will share the story of the second in the coming days. We are also exploring other deaths that have not yet been reviewed but appear to be connected to abortion bans. Doctors warned state legislators women would die if medical procedures sometimes needed to save lives became illegal. Though Republican lawmakers who voted for state bans on abortion say the laws have exceptions to protect the “life of the mother,” medical experts cautioned that the language is not rooted in science and i...

Good news: the awful mid-19th century territorial law that forbade all abortions in Arizona is officially gone . Abortions in Arizona are now allowed through the 15th week of pregnancy, and there is still that invasive ultrasound and 24 hour waiting period to deal with. There is a ballot initiative that would allow abortions up to the week of viability (24 weeks) and would make it easier for women to obtain abortions when their health or that of the fetus is threatened. If you are in Arizona, plan on voting this November.   Other news: "Conservatives" (I'd use the term authoritarians, and that is not me splitting hairs) have been obsessed with increasing the birth rate. It turns out their policies won't have any noticeable impact . That does not surprise me. We have not had an agrarian economy in the US in ages, so the need for children as free farm labor is gone. Try renting an apartment anywhere these days if you have some ridiculous number of kids, and then finding...

For Donald Trump, whose Supreme Court nominees overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, the Dobbs decision is becoming the Ghost of Christmas Past. That may be a bit of an understatement. The Ghost of Christmas Present has entered the chat this election season as well. Marcy Wheeler of emptywheel fame has a top-rate analysis of the consequences of Trump's decision to pursue a hard-line anti-abortion policy during his term in office , which now dog Trump and his running mate on the campaign trail as we enter the last couple months of the campaign. She is justifiably critical of media outlets' coverage of Trump's logical contortions in the aftermath of Dobbs, noting that Trump's problem is ultimately not one of "messaging" (there's no way to dress up grossly unpopular anti-abortion policies with different slogans). Trump's problem is that the policy choices his administration made are coming back to haunt him. This is a deeper story about Trump's actions, and...