You know, it’s extremely disgusting that Trump and his Republican minions are so adamant about the suppression of free speech and truth when it pertains to their own ideology, values and beliefs, yet find it perfectly justifiable to suppress the free speech and truth of others, such as dictating what facts of actual American history and current social mores and problems can be taught to our kids in public schools. or their selective suppression of voting rights aimed specifically at people they feel don’t adhere to their Republican ideology, values and beliefs, all under the guise of MAGA.
In reality, Trump has used MAGA to turn this country into a divisive quagmire and now sits down at Mar-A-Lago, free and clear, and golfs, plays the martyr, continues to stir the pot of discontent and takes no responsibility whatsoever for what he has done to America.
MIKE EKLUND, Mercer, Wis.
In his latest rant, the former guy accused or charged President Biden of dementia. This is a case of what psychiatrists call “projection.” The hurler of the insult is experiencing the exact symptoms that he is hurling at his target. If there is anybody around the former guy that really cares for him, they should get him help. There is no reason for stigma, it happens even to royalty (witness the case of King George III of England.)
STEVEN Z. ROSENSWEIG, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Most historians regard the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision of 1857 as the most immoral ever enacted by the nation’s highest court. In that case, the court ruled that Dred Scott, an ex-slave who had lived in free territory, had no rights because (as Chief Justice Roger B. Taney proclaimed), blacks, who are “beings of an inferior order … had no rights that a white man was bound to respect.”
Do you see a parallel between the despicable Dred Scott decision in 1857, and the decision to overthrow Roe vs. Wade in 2022? The former denied the rights of people because of the color of their skin, and the latter denies the rights of people because of their gender. Both trample on human dignity, and the latter cancels a woman’s right to decide what’s best for her health and welfare.
Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun’s 1973 decision in Roe vs. Wade that legalized abortion became a pivotal landmark towards women’s full emancipation. But now, five people’s religious dogma, their alignment with the GOP and the Religious Right (all of which have nothing to do with jurisprudence), have returned women to their mission of “childbearing,” which St. Paul proclaimed as their path to salvation in I Timothy 2:15.
[Editor’s Note: Chief Justice John Roberts agreed with the judgment upholding the Mississippi law at the root of Dobbs v Jackson, which banned abortions after 15 weeks, but he did not join the five-member majority in Sam Alito’s opinion to overturn Roe and Casey.]
And it’s of no consequence if her childbearing is the result of incest or rape, or if she just prefers not to bear a child – or to bear more children than she can support.
Before Roe vs. Wade, countless women died because of the unsanitary conditions in which illegal abortions were performed. And now, thanks to five people who have never experienced those women’s poverty and despair, the deaths will resume.
In reaching judicious grounds to legalize abortion, Justice Harry Blackmun emphasized “the detriment that the state would impose upon the pregnant woman, and the distress for all concerned, associated with an unwanted child.”
Henceforth, however, it will be the police power of the state that will control women’s bodies. And their reproductive health will be the absolute province of state governments.
Overturning Roe is not only a dark day for women’s autonomy, for which they have fought so relentlessly, but also for all of us who cherish freedom.
DAVID QUINTERO, Monrovia, CA
Ideological poisoning is the direct and antithetical attack on our founders’ reasoned decision to erect and establish our nation as a “secular” Republic-Democracy. The basic reasoning for that decision was that religious/theocratic thinking and precepts are predicted on presumptive assumptions and not on factual/empirical evidence. They are, further, the imbued instinctive testosterone-laden misogynistic mindsets pertinent to “power and control” as was and is within males’/men’s creation of religion in “his/male’s” very first biblical precept in Genesis whereby he/males express the “chosen one” BS.
Suffragette Elizabeth Cody Stanton’s book challenged and chastised males’/men’s misogynistic designation of females/women in their presumptive dictates “three hundred times” for their dominant oppressive thinking of another “human being” deserved of equality in all its varied contexts.
Fast forward thousands of centuries later (2022), the time to defy and negate the 144 years females/women were “deemed lesser beings” and denied their “inalienable rights” to participate and vote in the decisionmaking process of governing. Add to this inhumane societal disgracen a misogynistic mindset amongs six males continue to facilitate their misogynistic mindsets attributed to our aforementioned denial and predominate corrupted governance consisting of a ratio of 75% male to 25% female.
It’s time for our nation’s citizenry to defy and deny minority autocratic, fascist, dictatorial decisionmaking and demand the immediate end to:
1) Lifetime tenure for the Supreme Court;
2) No longer the final decision makers but the entire citizenry shall be the final arbitrators at election time voting the will of the people on legal decisions;
3) The immediate legislative passage of the Equal Rights Amendment and at this time and juncture of evolutional enhancements toward a more equitable and fairer society by demanding the expedited institution of parity (50% male/50% female) within our entire governance (local, state and federal) throughout the nation expeditiously within a mandated four-year time frame to its complete, unequivocal fruition. It is only then shall the will of the people begin to negate the corrupted plutocracy and poisoning of theocratic falsities be defied as they were during our 1800s “Era of Enlightenment.”
FRANK C. ROHRIG, Milford, Conn.
Alas, the US Supreme Court has been taken over by billionaires and mean-spirited ideological nut jobs. Clearly it is doing more harm than good, presently.
Can it be reformed, maybe 10-year terms, two-thirds vote Congressional override, that sort of thing?
Or perhaps the very concept of a US Supreme Court is past its sell-by date?
I think we need to consider major overhaul and/or alternatives.
Just to get the ball rolling, how about some fair means of developing a pool of maybe 1,000,000 people from all demographic, social, economic and career groups, any of whom could do at least as good a job as some of the nasty screwballs on the current Court. Then from this pool have a lottery to select people to serve for 10-year terms on a court made up of, say, 100 judges. Oh wait, let’s say 101 judges. This would require a different building, I suppose.
This would be similar to the direction some colleges are going. A broad pool of people who probably could do OK at the college, and then a lottery to select from this pool enough to fill the available slots.
JERRY RICHARDS, Lyle, Wash.
By now you have probably gotten thousands of emails about why we cannot easily convert the corn grown for ethanol into human food.
For one thing, the corn grown for ethanol is generally called field corn, or, more properly, dent corn. That’s for the prominent dent in each kernel as it dries.
It’s a very high-starch type of corn, not at all like the lovely sweet corn that starts to make its appearance at roadside stands about now. I don’t think you could pay people to eat field corn off the cob.
I suppose it might be blended with other types of corn for tortilla chips and taco shells and the like.
But most of it would probably get chopped up and fed to hogs and cattle. And with the drought out West drying up range lands, cattle might have to be brought into feed lots much earlier and fed any form of veggies and grains that farmers could find.
A nice overview of the different types of corn can be found at https://nebraskacorn.gov/issues-initiatives/your-food/field-corn-vs-food-corn/
LAURA ‘SNOWS’ SOSNOWSKI, Albert Lea, Minn.
The Driftless Bioregion in southwest Wisconsin, a functioning ecosystem for 500-million years, produces the most precious resource on Earth: WATER. Glaciers circled this region, leaving intact a sacred remnant of original Earth, which continues to manufacture clean water, filling wells and gifting the region with artesian springs. This invaluable resource has been converted into a commodity. It is threatened by Roth Feeder Pig II, a factory farm or CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation), which, if permitted, will pump vastly more than 9.4 million gallons of pure water out of an aquifer shared by thousands, pollute it with hog manure, and spread it on acres within a quarter-mile of the Kickapoo River.
The statutes that protect and fund factory farms and their meat-processing are an injustice. Instead of support for the region’s many small sustainable farms and ranches, tax dollars go to the destructive production of soybeans, wheat, and corn that are stripped of nutrients and fed to animals confined in inhumane conditions. When these factory farms inevitably have accidents and fail, our taxes pay for it, having to buy out these operations. One should not throw pearls before swine, nor throw swine excrement into clean water.
Crawford County’s Land Conservation Committee: Please do not permit Roth Feeder Pig II.
KATHLEEN TIGERMAN, Steuben, Wis.
From The Progressive Populist, September 1, 2022
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