What was Schumer thinking?
See this recent comment from “Kate”:
The Democrat bill to “codify” Roe failed its procedural vote today, 51-49, with Joe Manchin voting with the Republicans. Manchin pointed out, correctly, that this would not “codify” Roe as it stands, but would expand it, invalidating any state law restricting abortion before 24 weeks and providing for a “health” exception later than that, which is a loophole allowing the procedure at any point.
For commenter Mike K, and others, who are limited pro-choice, there is (in my opinion) really nothing unreasonable about a twelve to fifteen week limit, with a provision for severe medical emergencies thereafter.
So all Chuck Schumer has accomplished with this vote is to label all Dem senators other than Manchin as pro-abortion extremists, ahead of an election which is likely to be very negative for his party.
Indeed, the phrase “codifying Roe” is an attempt to soften what Democrats were trying to do in that bill.
Why is Schumer engaging in what seems at first glance to be pointless theater? What else do Schumer and the Democrats plan (and in fact have already begun doing) to go along with it and complement it?
One approach of theirs is to present the slippery slope argument that next on the Republican ban list is interracial marriage and also homosexuality. The Democrats know that’s a lie, but they are hoping that plenty of voters will buy the lie. The engine of the left is to drum up both fear and envy, and this is the fear part.
Another idea I think Democrats have is that, if Roe is overruled, the red states that put stricter abortion laws in place will give the Democrats talking points. Even though the more stringent laws will be in red states, they believe it nevertheless will allow them to say that next abortion (and those other things – interracial marriage, etc.) will be banned nationwide if the GOP takes control of Congress. That probably will persuade some people to vote for Democrats, but it’s just as likely that the passage of extremely permissive abortion laws in blue states will turn off a lot of other people who are “pro-Choice” but not for infanticide. Killing a fetus of twenty-four weeks is infanticide now, considering what modern medicine can do, and this is what the bill they proposed would allow nationwide if passed:
The Women’s Health Protection Act would protect a woman’s right to end her pregnancy at least until ‘fetal viability’ and would require abortions be legal up until birth if ‘when, in the good-faith medical judgment of the treating health care provider, continuation of the pregnancy would pose a risk to the pregnant patient’s life or health.’ The bill directs courts to ‘liberally’ interpret the legislation. The bill’s chief sponsor in the Senate, Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said that the bill ‘doesn’t distinguish’ between physical and mental health in decisions on late-term abortions.
Schumer and the Democrats also count on a cooperative MSM to frame the GOP vote against this bill’s advancement as an indication that the GOP wants to ban abortion entirely for the whole nation. While there are some Republicans who wish to do that, it does not appear to be even close to a majority position among Republicans (and in my opinion would run afoul of SCOTUS anyway). But this won’t stop the Democrats from saying it and from hoping that the public will believe it.
But why didn’t the Democrats let Collins and Murkowski’s more moderate bill be voted on? It had more chance of passing, although I don’t know whether it could have crossed that 60-vote cloture threshold. But I can only conclude that the Democrats wanted their own bill to fail so that they could keep the issue alive for the midterm – they believe (rightly or wrongly) that it’s the most winning issue they’ve got.
The vice president ignored shouted questions on why Democrats didn’t pursue a more moderate bill with Murkowski and Collins.
Murkowski said in a statement ahead of the vote that the Women’s Health Protection Act was billed as a way to ‘codify Roe v. Wade’ but ‘in reality goes much further—nullifying state and religious freedom laws across the country in the process.’
Murkowski noted that the bill does not include the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal dollars from funding abortion, does not include conscience protections for healthcare providers who do not wish to perform abortions due to their religious beliefs and ‘allows late-term abortions without any notable restrictions.’…
While typically a Senate leader won’t bring a vote unless they feel there are the votes to pass it, Schumer says it’s important for every senator to go on the record on abortion rights. He claims the proposal is ‘very simple’.
His team also feels it’s important to show that Democrats are fighting for a woman’s ability to terminate their pregnancy.
‘[W]e are making sure that … every senator will have to vote and every, every American will see how they voted,’ Schumer said. ‘And I believe the Republican Party, the MAGA Republican Party, will suffer the consequences electorally when the American people see that.’
That’s his hope, anyway, and he’s betting on the stupidity of the American public.
What’s up with the baby formula shortage?
Suddenly there’s a raft of articles about the current baby formula shortage, which seems to have been caused by a combination of the usual “supply chain problems” and a large plant closing because of possible illness and two deaths from bacterial contamination there – a contamination that doesn’t seem to have actually been related to those illnesses and deaths after all.
In many states, including Texas and Tennessee, more than half of formula is sold out in stores. Nationwide, 40 percent of formula is out of stock—a twentyfold increase since the first half of 2021. As parents have started to stockpile formula, retailers such as Walgreens, CVS, and Target have all moved to limit purchases…
Demand for formula surged as parents hoarded in 2020; then demand fell, leading suppliers to cut back production through 2021; and now, with more new mothers demanding more formula in 2022, orders are surging faster than supply is recovering.
Finally, the third factor: America’s regulatory and trade policy…
FDA regulation of formula is so stringent that most of the stuff that comes out of Europe is illegal to buy here due to technicalities like labeling requirements…
America’s formula policy warps the industry in one more way. The Department of Agriculture has a special group called WIC—short for Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children—that provides a variety of services to pregnant and breastfeeding women and their young children. It is also the largest purchaser of infant formula in the United States, awarding contracts to a small number of approved formula companies. As a result, the U.S. baby formula industry is minuscule, by design. A 2011 analysis by USDA reported that three companies accounted for practically all U.S. formula sales: Abbott, Mead Johnson, and Gerber.
The author of that piece has an anti-Trump and pro-globalist agenda, but I think the article probably summarizes the main causes of the shortage pretty well.
Also, evidence has surfaced that there’s no shortage in border facilities that house people who come to the US illegally. I’m not in favor of starving the innocent babies they bring who might be dependent on formula. But the current shortages for the general public need to be addressed, and pronto.
Does it seem to you as though children have gotten the short shrift lately, with unnecessary school closings, leftist propaganda in schools, attempts to remove limits on abortion, and shortages of baby formula?
[NOTE: I’ve also seen comments elsewhere in which people say “Why doesn’t every woman nurse?” Some women can’t, and some babies and even older children need formula for medical reasons. But women also have the right to choose not to nurse for whatever reason. Once that decision has been made and the woman’s milk supply dries up, starting again (or for the first time) is very difficult. The babies don’t always cooperate, either, if they are used to getting milk from a bottle.]
Joe Manchin has certainly surprised me
Prior to Biden’s presidency, my opinion of Joe Manchin was that he often talked a good line – for a while – and then caved at the last minute. That was my perception, anyway.
So my prediction was that this was what would happen going forward. He would cave on the filibuster and all the rest, and the Democrats would be able to pass their incredibly radical agenda with his help if not his rhetoric.
But he certainly has hung in there on opposing ending the filibuster, and he’s done likewise on a number of other votes including this most recent one about allowing debate on the Democrats’ radical abortion bill. And yet he’s never become a Republican and I’m almost certain he never will, which means that at least for this session of Congress the Democrats continue to hold the majority and the power to set an agenda that goes with it.
Open thread 5/12/22
Twitter, Musk, and Trump
Musk says that if and when he owns Twitter he will allow Trump to return:
Musk said Tuesday he would reverse Twitter’s ban on former President Donald Trump if his acquisition goes through.
“Permanent bans should be extremely rare and really reserved for accounts that are bots, or scam, spam accounts… I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump,” Musk said at FT Live’s Future of the Car conference. “I think that was a mistake, because it alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice.”
That’s an odd way to put it. Would it have been okay if it had been effective in resulting in Donald Trump not having a voice? Would it have been okay if it hadn’t been permanent?
I was interested enough in the answers to these questions that I watched the part of the Musk interview involving Twitter in order to see if I could figure it out. Here’s the relevant portion, and it’s still not clear. Seems to me that when the oh-so-superior interviewer asked him a question that stated that Trump (see *NOTE below) had incited the crowd to riot on January 6th, Musk didn’t push back on that at all. It also seemed – at least, this is my interpretation – that Musk might have banned Trump at least temporarily at that point if Musk had been in charge. As I said, it’s really not clear:
It may end up being moot, because – as Musk points out – there’s still a chance the deal will fall through, and Trump has also stated he’s not coming back to Twitter no matter what. Of course, that was a few weeks ago and before Musk said he’d lift the ban.
Surprisingly, considering its performance in recent years, the ACLU supports the return of Trump to Twitter. My opinion is that Trump might end up returning; he certainly loved Twitter for a long time and used it most cleverly.
[*NOTE: Musk’s supercilious FT interviewer in that clip calls Trump “the toupeed elephant in the room.” However, Trump doesn’t wear a toupee; here are various theories about what’s going on with his odd hairdo. And Elon Musk has almost certainly had one or two hair transplant procedures (or perhaps even wears a toupee, but certainly has had some sort of hair intervention).
That interviewer shows both his ignorance and his condescending arrogance in assuming he knows what he doesn’t know, and possibly annoying Musk into the bargain – although Musk’s expression doesn’t reveal any obvious reaction, his eyes go from looking down to suddenly looking straight at the camera right after the interviewer makes that comment about Trump’s supposed toupee. But in that interview Musk changes eye position right before answering many of the questions, not just that one (often he looks up when reacting, however).
I’ve often heard people say they can always tell when a person is wearing a toupee. But I think that’s a stupid thing to say. Sometimes you can tell, with a badly made toupee. But how would you know if you’re detecting all toupees if you’re by definition not spotting the really good ones? You wouldn’t know you had missed any, unless you had an official registry of all the toupee-wearers in the world.
Hmmm, maybe I’ll write a future post about toupee-spotting arrogance.]
“Reproductive health” = abortion
Commenter “Another Mike” has a question:
Does it seem odd to anyone else that the pro-abortion crowd uses the term “reproductive health” when abortion is actually anti-reproduction?
It doesn’t seem odd. It seems rather typical of the left, which likes to call things by names that are at least somewhat Orwellian if not full Orwellian and that mean something different than their titles would imply.
For example, the term “reproductive health” is similar to the term “Planned Parenthood” in some ways. That latter organization’s name has an interesting history. It was initially called the more straightforward, “American Birth Control League,” but:
Some found the ABCL’s title offensive and “against families”, so the League began discussions for a new name. In 1938, a group of private citizens organized the Citizens Committee for Planned Parenthood to aid the American Birth Control League in spreading scientific knowledge about birth control to the general public. The BCCRB merged with the ABCL in 1939 to form the Birth Control Federation of America (BCFA). In 1942 the name of the BCFA was changed to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
The emphasis became parenthood, as though it was some sort of fertility clinic rather than a dispenser of birth control (and later also of abortion). And yet the name wasn’t exactly a lie, because most people who use birth control do intend to become parents some day and that day will hopefully be planned.
The term “reproductive health” for the pro-abortion crowd is something like that. It’s at least half true in that the death rate for women who undergo legal abortions is lower than the death rate for women who give birth. Obviously, that statistic only focuses on the pregnant woman and ignores the enormous fact that the woman’s fetus is being killed in the process, a fetus which had the extremely likely potential to be born as a baby and whose life is being snuffed out instead. But I think that the different death rates for women undergoing abortions versus those who give birth would almost certainly be the core of an argument someone might mount to justify the term “reproductive health” for abortion.
But, as “Another Mike” points out, what’s “reproductive” about it? Well, nothing really, no more than birth control is about “parenthood.”
But the term “reproductive health” also has the advantage of being quite generic and non-specific. Listeners may not even realize that it’s abortion that’s being discussed. In their minds, it could certainly include birth control, and they may even believe that implies that a person who’s against abortion would be likely to be against birth control, although that combination presently applies only to a small minority. But hey, what kind of monster would be against something as innocuous as “reproductive health” for women (or pregnant people, or whatever nomenclature they’re promoting to replace the word “women” these days)?
The term “reproductive health” for “abortion” is also akin to euphemisms such as “undocumented” for “illegal,” and so many other such labels that seek to soften and reframe the thing that is actually being described. The left doesn’t consider this a side issue of little importance, it considers the naming of things to be extremely important in shaping perceptions and in leading people to support the left’s desired political and policy decisions.
In fact, all political parties are interested in what things are called; it’s certainly a common propaganda tool. I think the left is generally far better at it than the right, though, and far more duplicitous.
Norman Podhoretz on Donald Trump and ex-friends
After writing about Midge Decter’s death yesterday, I looked up her husband Norman Podhoretz. I was pretty sure he was still alive, and sure enough, he is – at 92. Decter was 94. So there’s a lot of longevity in that couple.
I also recalled that Norman Podhoretz was one of the so-called “neocons” who thought Donald Trump was a good president, and I wanted to check that out, too. Sure enough, he was. I think he’s worth quoting on the subject:
Podhoretz, who initially supported Marco Rubio in the 2016 Republican primaries, remarked about the primary campaign:
“I began to be bothered by the hatred that was building up against Trump from my soon to be new set of ex-friends. It really disgusted me. I just thought it had no objective correlative… They called them dishonorable, or opportunists, or cowards—and this was done by people like Bret Stephens, Bill Kristol, and various others. And I took offense at that. So that inclined me to what I then became: anti-anti-Trump. By the time he finally won the nomination, I was sliding into a pro-Trump position, which has grown stronger and more passionate as time has gone on.”
Podhoretz says his views however, have caused him to lose ex-friends who were anti-Trump, saying: “Well some of them have gone so far as to make me wonder whether they’ve lost their minds altogether.” Of Trump, he argues: “he fact that Trump was elected is a kind of miracle. I now believe he’s an unworthy vessel chosen by God to save us from the evil on the Left… His virtues are the virtues of the street kids of Brooklyn. You don’t back away from a fight and you fight to win. That’s one of the things that the Americans who love him, love him for—that he’s willing to fight, not willing but eager to fight. And that’s the main virtue and all the rest stem from, as Klingenstein says, his love of America. I mean, Trump loves America.”
Those remarks have stood the test of time. Norman Podhoretz’s statement about his “new set of ex-friends” is a witty reference to a book he’d written earlier (2000) entitled Ex Friends: Falling Out with Allen Ginsberg, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer. It described a process with which many of us are familiar: ostracism from the left when someone leaves the fold, steps out of the circle dance. Podhoretz had done that on a much larger and more public scale than most of us.
This is from a review highlighted at Amazon:
Allen Ginsberg, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Hanna Arendt, Norman Mailer, and Lillian Hellman – among the other things these writers and intellectuals all had in common is Norman Podhoretz. With them Podhoretz was part of “The Family,” as the core group of New York intellectuals of the 50s and 60s came to be known. And in Ex-Friends, he has written the intellectual equivalent of a family history – a sparkling chronicle of affection and jealousy, generosity and betrayal, breakdowns and reconciliations, and ultimately of dysfunctions impossible to cure. Ex-Friends is filled with brilliant portraits of some of the cultural icons who defined our time. Yet anyone who has followed Norman Podhoretz’s career as a writer and editor and above all one of the leading controversialists of our time will expect more than just another fond memoir of literary alliances and quarrels, brilliant talk and bruised egos. Indeed, while Ex-Friends has some of the elements of a personal diary, it is also a journal de combat describing the intellectual and social turbulence of the 60s and 70s and showing how the literary living room was transformed into a political battleground where the meaning of America was fought night by night. Against this backdrop, Podhoretz tells how he left The Family and undertook a trailblazing journey from radical to conservative, a journey that helped redefine America’s intellectual landscape in the last quarter of the 20th century and caused his old friends to become ex-friends.
That takes intellectual and social courage, which Norman Podhoretz most definitely had. By supporting Trump he lost some of his newer supposedly conservative friends such as Bill Kristol, who indeed appears to be one of those who have “lost their minds altogether.” I’ve not read the book, but perhaps I should.
Norman Podhoretz wrote another book I’ve never read but that sounds interesting, entitled Why Are Jews Liberals? (2010). Many commenters here have asked that question and speculated on the answer. Podhoretz has an answer, but I guess you’ll have to read the book to find out what it is.
Open thread 5/11/22
Yesterday the weather was beautiful and the waves were very very big:
On the constitutionality of “codifying” Roe
That seems to be the new buzzword on the left: we’re going to “codify” Roe – meaning pass a statute making it illegal for states to ban or modify abortion except in whatever ways the Congressional statute allows.
This seems to be unconstitutional to me, if Roe is declared unconstitutional on the basis of abortion regulation being a state power rather than a federal one. Why would a statute be any different? And yes, they would try to say it’s a regulation of interstate commerce, but I don’t think that would hold up with the conservative justices on the Court these days, nor should it.
At any rate, the Democrats know the bill won’t pass. It can’t get past the filibuster and the filibuster apparently will hold, plus not all the Democrats would vote for it (looking at you, Joe Manchin) even if it somehow were to get past the filibuster. And if Republicans take over the Senate, they could just repeal it again.
The proper avenue would be a constitutional amendment, as I’ve stated before. But the country is too split for that to work out, as far as I can see, and I think the Democrats and also the Republicans see it too. There’s a history of trying, however – on the part of the Republicans post-Roe.
One of those anti-abortion amendments was supported by guess who in 1973:
After Biden joined the Senate in 1973, he voted for a failed constitutional amendment that would have allowed states to overturn the court’s Roe ruling. In a Washingtonian magazine interview at the time, he said of Roe: “I think it went too far. I don’t think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body.”
If you’re interested in the various efforts to pass a Human Life Amendment, please see this.
Roundup
(1) Jen Psaki lies again about inflation. Well, isn’t lying without a qualm one of the main qualifications for the press secretary job in this administration?
(2) Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot appears to call for civil war.
Ah, but Lightfoot’s got triple intersectional creds – Democrat, black, and a lesbian – and so it doesn’t matter that she is using rhetoric that implies the need for violence against conservative SCOTUS justices. By the way, I would interpret her words as metaphor, but that’s not the way the left would see it if someone on the right had said those same words about justices on the left.
(3) And speaking of Lightfoot and fighting rhetoric, there’s this:
Birth of Abortion Tourism: Chicago To Pay for Pregnant Women to Travel to City for Abortions
“We are soldiers. We are soldiers prepared to fight…” [said Mayor Lightfoot]
Lightfoot pledged to use $500,000 in public money to make Chicago a “safe haven” for those seeking abortions…
The money will go toward transportation, lodging, care “and, if necessary, safe and legal access to an abortion procedure,” Lightfoot said.
I guess Chicago city government is flush with cash.
(4) True the Vote plans to release more of the information underpinning the film “2000 Mules.”
(5) What on earth? “Passengers say Lufthansa threw all visible Jews off NYC-Budapest flight because some weren’t wearing masks.”
RIP Midge Decter
My first thought on hearing that Midge Decter had died was mild surprise that she had still been alive. And yet it turns out she wasn’t all that old, just 94 – an age that sounds increasingly young to me. I’d not known all that much about her anyway, except that she was one of the original old-fashioned neocons and Norman Podhoretz’s wife and John Podhoretz’s mother.
I’d picked up a book of her essays in the 1980s. I think it was on a remainder pile, and it had some sort of title that intrigued me (I no longer remember what it was). I read it thinking it was pretty good, and only later learned that she’d been a political changer (a term I didn’t use at the time) and was on the right. Little did I know I’d follow suit in less than two decades.
In one of several essays in memory of Decter that I’ve read in the last few days, this statement of hers caught my eye and made me chuckle at its aptness:
The 1980 election was a watershed moment for Decter. She and Podhoretz supported Reagan, whom they had first met in 1978. By now, Decter had broken with the Left, and though she did not love the Republican Party, she recognized that it was more aligned with her worldview. “There comes a time when you need to join the side you’re on,” she said.
There comes a time when you need to join the side you’re on – that’s the way it finally becomes for left-to-right changers (neither Decter nor I were ever really on what you’d call the left, but I’ve used “left” as a convenient shorthand here). Many people cannot make that switch, however, as I wrote in this post about political affiliation as a sort of “birthmark.”
Decter also said this:
In 1983, when some of the old crowd tried to revive the CDM in advance of the 1984 elections, she was not interested: “We tried to wrest the Democratic Party back from the left, and we failed.”
Boy, did they ever.
RIP Midge Decter.
[NOTE: I was curious but unable to find anything about Decter’s opinion on Trump, but I recall that her husband was for him and her son mostly against him.]