Decades ago, I was a single issue voter. The Democratic party’s position on abortion was sufficient for me to cast a vote for Kerry. No other issue was required. I could have differed from them on every single other issue, and I still would have voted Democrat. At the time, of course, I’d also come to believe that I’d been greatly and sadly mistaken in accepting the WMD justification for the war in Iraq, and I probably would have voted for Kerry on that basis alone as well.

On the one hand, you could argue that I could and should continue to vote Democrat for reproductive rights alone, since if we’d had Democratic presidents, abortion would still be universally legal in the US today. However, since 2004, we’ve had 12 years of Democratic presidency and 8 years of Republican presidency, and the Supreme Court has shifted from 5-4 left-leaning to 6-3 conservative. All I can conclude from this is that Democrats are wildly incompetent.

Right now, we have Sotomayor, a T1 diabetic at 69 years old. We have probably 50/50 odds in terms of who the next president will be. Life expectancy for a T1 diabetic is optimistically 65 to 72 – Sotomayor is 69. That is, she could drop dead at any minute (just like Biden). If the Dems had any sense, she would have stepped down six months ago. I realize she, like most people, does not want to confront her own mortality, but this is ridiculous. There is a 50/50 chance Trump is going to win, and I’d say a 50/50 chance that if he does, Sotomayor will be forced to step down due to health, and the court will go 7-2. If that happens, quite apart from my personal views, it will be an absolute disaster for the country. The next Democratic president will be under incredible pressure to pack the court. Angry left-leaning types will threaten revolution. All this can be avoided for sure if S steps down and is replaced by a healthy 50-year-old left-leaning justice.

From the Hill:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) declared that the talk is “nonsense” and said she was surprised that this issue has entered the discourse. 

“Where did this come from?” Warren said. “I don’t want to add any fuel to the fire on this. I think she’s doing a great job, and I am grateful for her public service.”

I dislike Warren for many reasons, but I’ll certainly add this to the list. SHE too is very old and should step aside for younger blood, but that’s beside the point.

“She’s not 70. I might remind some of my colleagues to look around, check their birth certificate,” Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), a Judiciary Committee member, told The Hill. “She’s going full speed ahead. I’m not aware of significant issues, and I am aware of extraordinary competence.”

“This is not an RGB situation,” he added, using the common abbreviation of Ginsburg’s name. 

Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) also told reporters Monday that he wants Sotomayor to remain on the high court.

A number of Democrats indicated they were floored that this conversation is even happening, as Sotomayor has given no public signals she is considering such a move or that her health has changed recently.

“I think she’s doing a great job, and I think she should stay. I’m a little baffled by [the chatter],” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said.

Is there no one in office in this country with some backbone and willingness to do and say what’s right for the country as opposed to their own personal interests? If a leading Democrat would stand up and state the obvious, I swear I would support that individual for president. We’ll end up with a 7-2 court, and people will blame Trump, and whichever right-leaning justice has the misfortune to be appointed, but Trump will literally be doing the job 50% of the populace elects him for. Why are the Democrats and Biden failing to do the job that 51% of the populace elected THEM for? Why does Sotomayor consider her personal ambition and career more important than the future of the country?

Sensible commentary from the HuffPost:

Supreme Court justices have made hundreds of trips and public appearances in recent years. But only one sitting justice appears to have taken the unusual step of traveling with a medic: 69-year-old Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

There are towering stakes for Sotomayor’s ability to remain a Supreme Court justice. At 69, she is beyond conventional retirement age and is the oldest of three Democratic-appointed justices remaining on the court.

Her dissents, with their trademark clarity and righteousness, have made her a favorite of many liberals. But the window in which President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats have an all-but-guaranteed ability to appoint her replacement is rapidly closing. 

“It’s fair to point all this out,” said Gabe Roth, the executive director of Fix the Court, which sued to release the documents.

In August, he noted, Sotomayor will have spent 15 years on the court.

“Fifteen years was the average tenure for … [U.S.] justices for the first 150 years of our republic,” Roth said. “In the last 55 years, that number has now doubled. But the idea that Justice Sotomayor might be considering staying on the court until, I don’t know, Naomi Biden [the president’s granddaughter] is president, is probably not something a lot of folks would want to see.”

Sotomayor appears to be the only justice for whom security agents are required to wear personal protective equipment, per the documents. But Sotomayor’s caution around COVID-19 due to her preexisting condition is already public knowledge. Sotomayor avoided in-person oral arguments until early 2022, and she was the only justice seen wearing a mask when she returned.

As for Sotomayor, privately, Democrats have told reporters they are worried about the optics of pressuring the first Latina justice to step down.

RBG’s failure to step down forever tainted – I would say destroyed – her legacy. The case for Sotomayor to step down is just as strong as it was for RBG; it’s just not as clear to the average person, since most people are not aware that T1 diabetes will reduces your life expectancy by around ten years. Sotomayor’s “effective” age is 79, not 69.

I look at Twitter occasionally.  I never go to twitter.com to start, but sometimes I’ll read a news article and there will be a tweet.  Because of the privacy settings, I have to go to Twitter to see said tweet.  I probably do this less than once a week – maybe once or twice a month.  However, I decided to stop by twitter.com and see what all the fuss was about.  I started scrolling through and reading tweets and I found myself getting pissed off.  Everyone is very loudly and often offensively expressing their opinions, which I often don’t agree with.  These obnoxious tweets are interspersed with “interesting” posts about this or that arcane thing that I find not interesting in any way.  Wow.  Yuck.  I vowed not to visit Twitter again any time soon.

With that said, lots of other people visit Twitter.  It’s kind of alarming that the Twitter addicts have such an outsized influence on life and politics.  What kind of personality traits lead someone to spend a lot of time on Twitter?  And do we really want people with those personality traits (eg Musk) affecting our lives?  In any case, needless to say, I fully agree with Musk that censoring major newspapers – Covid origins, laptop story, etc. – is utterly unacceptable.  Let’s consider Covid “misinformation.”  Who gets to decide what is misinformation?  The CDC?  I personally think the CDC is probably about as good as it gets in terms of government organizations in terms of health advice.  With that said, it’s an arm of the government, and letting the government decide what is “misinformation” is seriously sketchy.

In Russia, media organizations that aren’t in line with Putin are suppressed and put out of business directly.  Things aren’t that bad in the US.  But if major newspapers, like the New York Post, cannot share their articles on Twitter because a government organization of any kind deems them “misinformation,” that is a serious problem.  Here in the brave state of Washington, our governor wanted to make it a crime to claim that an election was “rigged.”  Sounds great, right?  That would prevent all that nonsense in 2020 when Trump’s cronies claimed the election was unfair, right?  OK.  But what about when the election actually *is* rigged?  And anyone who points that out is thrown in jail?  Luckily, the legislators in WA declined to pass the bill.  For me, it’s just not possible to have a neutral arbiter that decides what’s truth and what’s misinformation.  You have to let people make up their own minds.  Otherwise, you’re no better than Putin.

If I were in charge, I’d only allow people to post on social media under their own names.  If you compare the comments section on the Seattle Times or really any newspaper other than the NYT and the Wall Street Journal, Seattle Times and the like are filled with insults, vulgarity and poor behavior.  The Wall Street Journal makes people post under their real names, and the comments section is a different animal, with relatively civil discourse.  (The NYT also has polite discourse but they review all comments before posting, something which most newspapers and forums cannot afford.)  I’d like to see ALL online communities require people to post under their real names.  How to verify real names?  A credit card would be a pretty good option, or government ID for those who lack credit cards.

Groups are a problem.  I’d really like to stop “groups” from posting as a group without a name.  You could still allow groups, like say a newspaper, to post, but require under the group header to be the name of an actual person affiliated with that group.  So, if the New York Post, or a local road race, wants to post, fine, but there had to be an actual human putting their name out there.  In other words, no anonymous posting, ever.

Biden has a giant expensive bill he’s trying to pass – 1.75 trillion.  My basic problem with it is not its contents but the fact that he’s not really paying for it.  Balance the budget – then spend.  Otherwise you’re taking on debt that your children will pay off.  I’m not 100% sure what’s in it, but it mostly sounds like a bunch of malarkey.

Here’s what’s not in it: three months of maternity leave.

Here’s thing.  We’ve had literally decades of democratic rule since 1980.  And yet – no maternity leave.  Why not?  It’s almost like the Democrats bully women into voting for them by pointing at anti-choice Republicans and then, over and over, fail to prioritize things that matter to women – like maternity leave.

And no, 4 weeks of maternity leave is not acceptable.

There are roughly 4 million children born every year in the US.  To pay the parents of every single one of those children $10,000 for leave would cost 4 million * $10,000 = 40 billion per year.

So what if the Democrats had done this one tremendously important thing instead of messing around with this giant bill that, as far as I can tell, doesn’t really do anything great?  It would cost less than 2% of the proposed price tag.

Biden’s original plan called for expanding universal preschool.  Basically, they want to extend public school down to age 3.  I am EXTREMELY opposed to this.  Public school is a failure in many low income areas.  It’s a failure for the most needy kids.  And 3 year olds shouldn’t be in “school” anyway – they should be experiencing play-based learning, Montessori at most.  Want to help parents with child care?  How about giving them money to pay for whatever childcare THEY want to use?  Universal preschool will be a massively overpriced, underperforming boon for teacher’s unions.  You could give parents with children under 5 – ages 0-4 – all $10,000 per year per child for childcare to spend as THEY please – for 160 billion per year.  Less, actually, since a lot of families have at least one non-working parents.  (Call the difference administrative cost.)  So the total cost of the O’Meara plan is 200 billion.  I wouldn’t include anything else.  Keep it simple and actually provide something meaningful we can afford without indebting our great-grandchildren.

But if I were a senator, I would vote against Biden’s crazy bill.  Too expensive, and no maternity leave.

I actually think taxing billionaires net worth is a good idea, but I think it’ll be tossed out in court, making the bill even more responsible from a fiscal perspective.