Every morning in public schools throughout the country, students begin their day with the Pledge of allegiance. I know this because I spent almost 40 years teaching in public schools at various levels and in different places on both coasts and in the middle.

Politicians begin official meetings reciting the pledge.

We do not pledge our loyalty to the piece of cloth but to the nation it stands for, the one that is indivisible, affording liberty and justice for all, and, because we needed protection from the godless Commies of the 1950s, a country that is under the ever watchful eye of God.

The pledge was composed a few decades after the Civil War when its author noted that some of what caused the divisions leading to that war were cropping up in isolated places if not whole states and were being passed off as “American”.

It was a pledge to keep the country united.

However, the Pledge is somewhat like the second amendment as it too, although being a single sentence, has people claiming a slavish devotion to it even as they ignore the parts that do not support their ideology.

Tne Second Amenment is okay as long as you ignore the “well regulated militia” business.

People like Texas Senator Ted Cruz might be one of those people claiming this is a Christian country under God’s reign because for one thing that is clearly in the pledge he swears on occasion and because there is onky one religion in the country, but, apparently when it comes to indivisibility the pledge is not a sacrosanct.

The indivisible part is an inconvenience and can merely be swept aside to promote a particular ideology.

This is the UNITED States.

People from any state should be able to live in any state without any rights being restricted resulting in some people having more rights, or less, than others because a state legislature does not agree with something other state legislators do.

People should be able to travel between any of the fifty states withut a diminution of their rights.

I should not have to move from one state to an other to exercise the rights ofc itizenship relevant to me.

Ted has stated that the US Supreme Court should have left the issue of same-sex marriage up to individual states.

That way we can, just as with the right to choose, prove that this country is not indivisibloe or at best some people say the pledge with no meaning.

Regarding Marriage Equalty, Cruz has opined,

“Obergefell, like Roe v. Wade, ignored two centuries of our nation’s history. Marriage was always an issue that was left to the states. If you succeeded in convincing your fellow citizens, then your state would change the laws. In Obergefell, the court said, ‘No, we know better than you.’”

Didn’t Utah have to do somethong about polygamy before it could enter the Union, somewhat of a stomping on religious beliefs?

“And now every state must sanction and permit Gay marriage. I think that decision was clearly wrong when it was decided. It was the court overreaching.”

Note the use of “Gay” as the buzzword as opposed Marriage Equality and his basically wanting to show the country is indeed divisble as the rights of people as noted in the Declaration of Independence and what the Constitution stands for as mentioned in the Preamble should be up to individual regions and not a national character.

Just a reminder, “States Rights” was the false excuse for the Civil War unless you believe individual states can determe which residents are human and which chattel.

He was a bit practical as some of us have noted the confusion that would be caused by disolution of existing marriages that involve shared legal document and contracts like health insurance, inheritance, banking etc, and a system where those who are married can continue while after a date certain no such arrangements would be allowed for those yet to come.

Two Americas.

“You’ve got a ton of people who have entered into gay marriages and it would be more than a little chaotic for the court to do something that somehow disrupted those marriages that have been entered into in accordance with the law.

“I think that would be a factor that would, would counsel restraint, that the court would be concerned about. But to be honest, I don’t think this Court has any appetite for overturning any of these decision.”

He will tolerate their existence because he knows that the legal and financial confusion would be real bad, but, if it weren’t for those considerations , Same Sex Marriage being just so ungodly should be ban because it is not Biblical.

The Dominionsists love to blend Patriotism to religion in some very bizarre iconography with Jesus, guns, flags, and Trump with the language of American imperialism and nationalism.

Cruz’s, father was a right-wing Christian preacher and Dominionist holding to the belief that anointed “Christian” leaders should take over the civil governent and makes laws based on the Bible. and brought up his son accordingly.

Ted himself was annointed at his father’s New Beginnings mega-church in Bedford Texas, being declared a Dominionist Messiah who would bring God’s law to rule the land designating him as “God’s choice to lead an evangelical coup d’etat.”

If it weren’t for the finacial intertwinings, Ted would be all over getting rid of Marriage Equality.

He refuses to suppprt an one indivisible nation under God.

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Although he justifies the harsh conditions at the Bristol County House of Corrections in Dartmouth MA by claiming that his toughness keeps inmates from returning as his jail is a punishment for crime not a country club coddling criminals, the Sheriff of Bristol County, Thomas Hodgson, consistently has the highest recidivism rate in the state.

That means that he has more inmates returning for repeat offenses than any other sheriff in the state of Massachusetts, the ones who aren’t cruel.

Either his cruelty is a facade to promote his image as tough on crime and the scourge of the unlawful, or the criminals of Bristol County really like the dungeon setting and treatment.

A little Fifty Shades of Hodgson perhaps.

When lamenting the toughness of his job as a way of excusing his ineptness, he will point out that his inmates come from the lower economic levels of the county, most notably the Brown ones, those who fall between society’s cracks, and upon release return to their old environments where they survived through crime and resort to it again.

There is a fundamental truth about county jails that the sheriff ignores and leaves unaddressed, resulting in his high rate of recidivism.

A friend, Ira, a lawyer who has worked not only with the county jail inmates but for those the sheriff collected in his ICE detention menagerie until his denial of human and civil rights had ICE revoke his contract effectively firing him for poor and harmful performance of his duties, pointed out the simple, fundamental fact that the sheriff ignores.

Every inmate in a county jail, unless they die through (alleged) accident or suicide, will be going home.

That is what the sheriff does not seem to grasp.

If he did, he would have in place programs to help in re-entering society when it comes to housing and jobs so that upon release, inmates do not simply go back to the environment that got them in jail in the first place and hope for the best.

Going to the sheriff’s internet site one can see a list of educational and rehabilitation programs, but the reality is that just like the memes on Facebook with Abraham Lincoln opining on modern technology or the current political situation, you cannot assume it is true because it is on a computer with lots of color, pictures, and logos.

Just because it is on his website, it does not mean he actually is doing something.

Even on his own website there is an endless stream of pictures with the sheriff giving yet another person or group of people some form of recognition for what they have done as if that is what he does.

At least besides telling us who turned 100, Willard Scott also told us the weather.

This man’s primary job seems to be acknowledging that other people work.

Even though he knows the petty thief, the gangsta wannabee, and the two bit burglar will be going home to perhaps the worst conditions to be called a home, returning to petty thievery because there are no jobs available or for which he has had no training, and will resort to that which at least allowed for survival and some degree of humanity, the sheriff does little more than recite a list of impotent or dormant programs rather than start real ones to find inmates homes if that is necessary, job training, or any of those things that will change conditions and present opportunities to be a better citizen for the benefit of us all as well as the released person.

And, comically and blindly, while they return to the jail his cruelty ruled out their ever doing, and ignoring his system is not reducing recidivism, he gives speeches about how tough his job is because of the backgrounds of the people his jail houses who keep coming back because that is who they are.

He knows every inmate in his jail will be released back into those conditions, yet he does nothing to change the future of anyone he is supposed to be rehabilitating.

You get sent to your room to spend time thinking about what you have done, You don’t go to jail for that.

You go to jail to come out a better person for society’s sake and your own.

I am sure many of us, not all of us but I would venture to say most, have stood in the 12 items or less express line at the supermarket waiting as the person at the front with the overflowing shopping cart watches as each item is rung up, and only when the clerk announces the total price, begins for the first time to consider which method of payment to use, and then hunts through pockets or purse, wading through the different payment methods one of which will be eventually chosen with the understanding that, rather than take out all possible credit or debit cards to have at the ready in the event the first chosen is not approved, replaces all others back in their resting place and then, if necessary, repeats this each time an attempted card is not approved.

The reaction upon being told the price is usually one of shock, not at the total price, but at being told that after everything is rung up, the shopper is going to have to pay somehow.

When did that start?

They stand there totally ignoring the inevitable, neither taking out cash, card, or check book even when stores have signs reminding customers to start filling out a check when entering a line and some have little shelves on which to write all but the total amount.

Paying at the end of the checkout process should not come as a surprise.

Once could be because of distraction. More than once shows a disconnect from reality or an unconscious state of just being rude and self-centered to the disadvantage of all others.

The final step in either scenario is not a surprise.

It has been some thirty years since Governor Weld appointed Tom Hodgson to a position the general population knows little about and only takes an interest in if for some reason they end up in court and see a deputy sheriff in the building.

Bristol county has been found to be the only county in the state where the majority of citizens of it know the name of the sheriff and some of his reputation. But that is more because of his conrtroversies, grandstanding actions, the huge blunder of his ICE Detention Center, spending tax money on ostentatious but unneeded equipment, giving high paying, short-hour jobs with little responsibility to friends so they can qualify for a good medical program and retirement benefits their real jobs don’t have without the burden of actually having a real job, and for a while his being the monkey on Michael Jackson’s hip when it comes to his relationship with Trump.

It is not because of the sterling job he does as sheriff.

It is because of how bad he does it.

If in thirty years he hasn’t noticed his inmates keep changing and that they all eventually go home, this basic incompitence is enough of a reason to escort the man to the door.

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As a 72 year-old Gay, cisgender, white male I have to admit that for those reasons, and considering the history of those years to this relic, regardless of any empathy or sympathy for the Right to Choose movement, it is not my issue. 

In my youth it might have been one of the issues for which I gave my time and energy, perhaps not as specific as choice, but women’s equality in general and all that came with that, but in the hierarchy of those things closest to my heart because they were closest to me, labor, minority, women’s, and Gay rights, as they were things that would influence my many future years and needed a lot of correcting, the best I can be now is an ally.

I will be at the ramparts and all, but, just remember, my knowedge is not experiential, mainly academic, so my energy and urgency will simpy not match yours.

Now, with the very strong potential to lose certain GLBT rights for which many of us fought and had the chance to experience, however briefly, and my not having to choose whether or not to see a pregnancy through to the end because of my gender, orientation, and age, with the potential dissolution of marriage equality and other now assumed rights to be things forever, there is even a low degree of urgency from the older generation because for many it is a continuance of a struggle over which there had been some progress in their lifetimes but a battle to be continued or, now, refought by the young.

As effective as the older people might have been in their younger years to get things this far, times have changed and so should tactics, and we elders must accept that while we were the force in the past we are the allies now.

I have fought bigotry to successfully create a safe school environment in a state capitol city’s school district for all students including all the letters of the Rainbow Alphabet and watched as after 12 trouble free years where none of the predicted problems ever materialized, even the guaranteed ones in bathrooms and sports, the Make America Great Again people in power remove that protection because they feared it would engender the horrors it obviously had not.

These rights were won once and can be again, but those who established those rights will be well into their 80s if they were the ones fighting to restablish them. 

It is up to those much younger to make a better world that they can enjoy for a  long time to come.

The best I can be is an ally, not just to those fighting for women’s bodily autonomy, but the young Gays who will lose the rights won by those who will now see them taken back. 

The old tactics are irrelevant now, and we old people will be, in spite of our best intentions, working unconsciously to create a world we want, not the one the young need.

When the draft of the decision that would end Roe came out, not seeing anyone locally doing anything in protest, I made a sign about Roe and another one about the potential loss of other unenumerated rights and sat on the corner by the federal buiding in my city at which I had previously sat for my one man visibility semi-standouts, so named because I sat in a lawn chair. In the past for one full week, two hours each day I had brought attention to Trump’s opening salvo against GLBT people in 2017 and a few years later to expose the Sheriff of Bristol County MA for the bigot he is. This time I sat for five days in that time slot with a sign about the Roe decision and one about the potential loss of all unemumerated rights.

When a local women’s group began their once a week gathering at the opposite corner when Roe was killed, the corner favored by most gathered groups as it is in front of the federal bulding entrance, I contnue to show up each week with them, but at my corner. 

It is their issue and they need the freedom to say what they want and how they want to without filtering it because it is mixed company.

If guarded language tempers the necessary language, their message gets watered down and becomes an unconscious acceptance of the oppression they are fighting.

My additional topic of all enumerated rights, although an important one, would be adding another issue to their specific and targeted one and could possibly redirect the discourse.

As a good ally I speak along with. I neither speak for or instead of.

With the gaybies, their use of the word Queer so freely might bother me, but for how long?

The rest of my life compared to the length of the rest of theirs? 

We made mistakes and still made progress.

And if some tactics just rub me wrong, or might go against my assumed expert opinion?

Believe me, we older people wish some of our activist history could be polished up a bit. 

I have to accept that my time of being a mover and shaker is up. Like with fish it is not good to linget pas primet your time.

But count me and other old people as allies, even if we outwardly do not seem to have any relevance because we are are old, cisgender, white, Gay men.

As a Gay person I, like most others of my kind, although bein used to the usual tactics of demonizing us for use in scaring people toward a politician, ideology, or religion with no truth to what they say that really shows us to be bad by nature and things to be feared.

If we cannot be used to scare people, we are always useful as a wedge issue.

Guns, God, or Gays?

Like Gypsies and Lilith we take children. You can’t leave your child with us because the Lawd only knows what we would do.

And Gay teachers?

Please look at all the horrible things we don’t do but people insist we do.

Unlike religion that allows every child to slowly arrive at an acceptance of any particular faith totally on their own with neither grooming or recruitment, Gay teachers are all bout the grooming by acknowledging a kid exists as he, she, they , or xi may be.

Beyond the child-centric approach, dividing the adults among themselves gets played a lot as allowing Gays to have their rights means that Straights will somehow lose theirs. If Gays marry, straight marriages will be under attack. There was even for a time an adaptation of a racial segregation trope that when the Gays moved in there will go the neighborhood that was handily debunked each time a sketchy neighborhood became the place to live because the Gays made it so.

A friend who lived in Western Oklahoma and was a successful rancher decided to run for a place in Congress and then his town was gerrymandered so that by a sliver of land miles long it became connected to part nearest heavily Republican city to shift demographics. His opponent was from the”Big City” and knew nothing of ranching or the needs of ranchers yet would be representinga large percentage of the state’s ranchers and those interests. Having grown up on his family ranch that began with the land run and continued to hang on in spite of the Dust Bowl, although a lawyer by profession, he was a rancher for life.

When his fellow ranchers, who had been praising him for the work he had already been doing for them in the State House as their State Rep and stating that he would have been best for them in the long run, voted for the other guy, many admitted to the media that he was a good rancher who knew his stuff and would have represented them well, but he was Gay, and, as they had been constantly reminded by the opposition, as a Gay man, once he was in office, he would get all flighty and forget his his constituents

That was a scare tactic introduce by the city slicker’s campaign and was bought outright by people who knew better. Division conquered.

H e sold his ranch to a construction company planning to build track homes and moved to California to enjoy a more liberal environment having first made sure his rural town would be more in tune with where their Congressman came from.

It is never that we might be used as scapegoats and accepted as such by those who refuse to be informed, but how we are going to be used in such a way that Heterosexuals who would otherwise love us if they got to know the real us but choose to listen to others that keeps us guessing.

Heterosexuals reject us because of what they hear. jot for what they should know.

We are that delicious plate on the banquet table no one touches because a rumor spread that it was awful thus reserving it solely for the person starting the rumor or because someone at the table has a beef with whoever prepared it.

Matt Gaetz is using that tactic in an attempt to divide the Pro-Choice people from the Gay people by claiming it is better for Gay people if abortion were illegal.

During a House Judiciary Committee hearing on “Privacy and Civil Rights in Post-Roe America,” Gaetz strongly suggested that same-sex couples can only form families by adopting children from lesbian women who have been raped and He lamented that he “worries” that if LGBTQ organizations become “pro-abortion” that “fewer same-sex couples” would be able to form families.

In questions to the Director of the Human Rights Campaign who as a lawyer was supporting abortion rights, Gaetz asked,

“We have tens of thousands of same-sex couples that are raising families and raising children, as a consequence of adoption – tens of thousands, we know that as a consequence of census data. So, is there any data you’re able to reference that it would be more likely for a lesbian woman to have an unwanted pregnancy as a consequence of rape than the formation of a family through a same-sex couple adopting?”

Apparently he is unaware that in a Lesbian family there are two people fully capable of bearing children without having it be through rape. He seems to not understand that many Lesbian headed families have wanted to have the baby and worked on that?

He is either suggesting that Gay people oppose abortion for his really wrong headed reason, and/or that women, especially heterosexual ones watch out for the Gays turning on them when the time is advantageous.

Beware. Gays cannot be trusted. They will turn on you.

Gaetz also showed that in spite of having opinions on the subject or the people, he really does not grasp the concept of bisexuality. To him, bisexual women are incapable of a monogamous relationship because they never settle on one partner but keep playing around.

Otherwise, they would no longer be bisexual.

Maybe they too, like Lesbians, are good breeders for the Gay Community but without the negative form of conception. Lesbians have the discomfort of an assault while bisexual woman gleefully play around aborting their mistakes. Oh, if only they could settle down into long term, monogamous relationships unlike the Gay who are incapable of such.

He explained the logic behind his idea of Gays adopting the forced birth babies because God knows the pro-life crowd is slow to.

Speaking again to themlawyer from the HRC he went on.

“You would concede that it’s certainly more, that it’s more likely in America you have same-sex couples adopting than you do lesbians having unwanted pregnancies as a consequence of sexual assault? Right?”

He was calmly schooled on reality.

“Well, there may be, also be a misunderstanding about how same-sex couples form families. I also think it’s important to note that many bisexual women are in fact in relationships with other women.”

When he tried for the point by reducing Bisexuality to the simplest graspable concept by asking,

“If a woman is with men and women they’re bisexual, right?”,

and was told,

“That is not true, sir. An individual who is [attracted] to people of both sexes, both men – male and female, is someone who is bisexual. They can be in long-term monogamous relationships.”

“I don’t ask this to be dismissive but so are you saying lesbian women are also capable of being into men?” Gaetz asked.

“That is not what I said. I said bisexual.”

Who’s on first?

“Yeah, but my question is about Lesbians – same-sex couples, right? Because I care about this issue deeply. With the support of the Human Rights Campaign I sponsored the legislation to get rid of the statutory prohibition on Gay adoption in Florida. I felt that that was very bigoted, and I believe families are defined by love more than blood.”

“I worry that if the LGBTQ community and if the advocacy organizations for same-sex couples somehow reorient to be a pro-abortion enterprise, that could actually result in fewer same-sex couples having access to the family formation that gives them fulfilled lives. Are you concerned about that?”

After noting that “same-sex couples are three times more likely,” to adopt children than opposite-sex couples, Gaetz hit the big finish,

“And that’s why it’s astonishing to me that people that would that would purport to advocate for Gay Americans would say what we need is abortion on demand, because it’s these very people who are engaging in these adoptions and maybe it’s really not about the benefit of Gay couples. Maybe it’s about the money,” attempting to discredit HRC.

He is the one whom imagined HRC abandoning its mission of advocating for and supprting the non heterosexual people in society and then condemns her organization for it.

So the abortion issue is reframed.

No longer will women be able to count on Gays for support in regaining the right to choose because without enough Lesbians getting raped, we Gays need Het-breeders to keep the stock of adotable children since Lesbians don’t plan babies and Gay men have yet to discovern surrogacy.

Watch below or at this link:

This past week we saw two examples of the GOP’s tactic that allows them to avoid doing anything for the people of the country in favor of promoting the party over country.

Misdirection.

Jim Jordan asserted with certitude that the story of a ten year-old Ohio child’s having to cross state lines to get an abortion to free her from the pregancy resulting from a rape was a made up story, like Sandy Hook, or any number of mass shootings, to promote the Progressive agenda.

When a person of interest confessed to this and an additional rape after he was apprehended, Jim skated right by his earlier denial pointing out that this situation is an example of crime that could have been avoided by having stronger borders because the rapist appears to be undocumented.

And off we go from the trauma of the child and a specific instance were the rescinding of Roe had some devastating results to a more general discussion of another topic to avoid talking about this one.

No 10 year-old would have been raped anywhere in the United States anyway and, therefore, no abortion dilemma would be had, if the border were more secure because no one here as a citizen or a person with the proper papers ever rapes 10 year-olds.

While Jacketless Gym Jordan thankfully found a segue to the rapists that his hero, Trump, assured us Mexico freely sends across the border, another Republican congressman, Billy Long of Missouri, asserted during a radio interview that mass shootings are a “systemic problem”.

“When I was growing up in Springfield, you had one or two murders a year. Now, we have two, three, four a week in Springfield, Missouri, so something has happened to our society, and I go back to abortion. When we decided it was OK to murder kids in their mother’s wombs, life has no value to a lot of these folks.”

Why worry about reasonable gun control laws now that the Supreme Court has laid the foundation for a society free of mass shootings because women can’t get an abortion.

From news reports that child did, indeed, have an abortion and her rapist has been caught.

Beyond her having to deal with the trauma of this whole ordeal, the child will have to grow up knowing that she is responsible for any one of the future mass shootings that will occur until the abortion ban settles in completely and the gun problem evaporates.

Until then, this girl and others like her are responsible for whatever causes a young man to kill a lot of people in one place at one time.

I know their responsibility and burden because, as a Gay man, I have been responsible for hurricanes, tornadoes, wild fires, floods, and the occasional terrorist attack done by people who hate us but somehow do our bidding.

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Most people will remember back when Covid was still being called Corona and the numbers began to climb that the president at the time suggested not only that a cruise ship should not be allowed to dock so technically the passengers with the virus would not be part of the number of people in the country who had it because they would not be on American soil but on a ship at sea, and even suggested that we do not have mass testing as the fewer people you test, the fewer will be found to have the virus, so the number of those with the virus would remain low.

The fish in the trawler’s net are only the ones in the net and are vastly out numbered by the number of other fish in the sea. You might fill the net quicker but smaller nets mean fewer fish no matter the relation of quantity to net size.

This don’t-look-and-it-isn’t-there attitude might look humorous in retrospect, but that is if you ignore the devastation of a pandemic that might have been controlled with actions based on reality not images, and a thing of the past. However, with Senator Schumer testing positive for Covid, the reaction reveals that that concept did not die.

As part of the reflexive action of automatically coming to the defense of the previous president for his failures to stem Covid while recommending the wildest and most dangerous snake oil cures, Republicans have resorted to the most outlandish proof that the Democrat’s approach to Covid and, therefore, Biden’s was a total disaster.

Their proof this time of policy failure is that in spite of all the precautions they have been taking, more Democrats are coming down with Covid than Republicans.

If the protocols worked, why so many with Covid?

The reality is this.

Besides recommending or mandating policies and protocols, the Democratic party has been attempting to lead by example much like Elmo did with his vaccination. As a result, Democrats get tested more frequently than their Republican colleagues so naturally register more positive results as compared to the small numbers found with so few Republicans getting tested.

The Republicans are rather happy about this because the Democrats who have been working to end or at least bring the virus under control and are getting tested and then stay away from the capitol for the sake of others will miss votes helping the GOP obstruct any progress under Biden.

Chuck Schumer and Richard Blumenthal were unable to vote this week, but there had been nothing pressing in the senate that would have suffered from their absence. As time goes on, though, and as more Democrats test positive for Covid as we get hit by the soon to arrive variant, the GOP sails though the pandemic blissfully spreading the virus and blaming Biden for not controlling it, while potentially controlling the senate because of absences.

Party over public health.

Tim Kaine explained the situation this way.

“We need every Democrat. I would venture to suggest that the rates of infection are precisely identical between Democrats and Republicans. One group is publicly disclosing, and one group is not – that is my intuition.”

Since the beginning of March, 65 members of Congress have publicly reported positive tests and isolated themselves working at home as Schumer and Blumenthal did last week. Of that number because, either they have not been taking tests, but may have but, as was done with Republicans getting the vaccine when they first came out, saying nothing so as to appear anti-vax, or just have not disclosed that they took a test and what the results were, only six of them are Republicans who got tested.

While pointing at Democrats for overreacting by wearing masks, they present the image that only Democrats are getting the virus while by their refusal to find out if they are carriers and should take precautions to protect others the are quietly spreading it.

Even Republican lawmakers have conceded that Democrats probably test more frequently for various reasons.

Mitt Romney stated,

“We’re probably not reporting our results or offering as many tests.”

Senator Braun of Indiana sees it a different way.

“We’re in an endemic now, not a pandemic, and I guess you can continue that [testing] protocol as far into the future as you want to, but sometimes your policies can get to be very inconvenient when they don’t make sense.”

Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana feels it is all Karma for the Democrats trying to save lives apparently.

“When you’re trying to put forward bad bills, you get attendance problems.”

In the House, physical attendance isn’t requirement to get things done if Covid has a member, or many, in isolation. Proxy voting is allowed, so the business there faces little threat.

The senate has no proxy voting, so attendance is important and Covid caution is seen as a blessing especially when two Democrat senators, Mancin and Sinema, already threaten the passage of bills by threatening a majority vote.

While the Democrats follow protocols. not just to protect themselves but also others, the Republican attitude can be summed up by South Dakota Senator Roger Wicker.

“I test when I’m asked to test. I wouldn’t be afraid to test if I had symptoms. But I’m not having symptoms, I’m not going out of my way to test.”

Apparently, he never sent for his free home test kits.

Some Republican Senators, like Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, have admitted to not having been tested since they took the test required for attending the inauguration in January 2021, and many admit they decline invites to the White House because a Covid test is required.

But, unlike the Democrats whose testing reveals the many who have the virus and who should take steps to control it, the Republican way has produced fewer positive test results, and is, thereore, the most effective aproach.

My head hurts.

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A big question asked during the Vietnam War was why it was okay for an 18 year-old to get drafted, handed a gun, and then sent off to a war to kill total strangers for a very murky reason while these same people were denied any say in who got to be those who declared the wars that they had others fight.

That is why, among other reasons, the 26th Amendment came to be in March 1971 with the states quickly ratifying it and President Richard M. Nixon signing it into law that July.

It lowered the federal voting age to 18, the age at which all males were required by law to register for the draft.

This followed the Voting Rights Act, so it initially had a huge affect on elections.

But, as time went on, voting at 18 or at any age began to fall off for a variety of reasons, the saddest ones being having no time, simply forgetting, nothing good happens anyway except we get a lot to complain about until we don’t vote again the next time.

It is one thing to tell people to vote, ranting at those who don’t and practically begging for people to help make the country better in a proper way, it is another to at least attempt to create conditions that would increase voting.

Elizabeth Warren grew up during the time when a lower voting age was demanded and established. She knows the history and the hindrances.

Along with Georgia Representative Nikima Williams, Warren has introduced the Youth Voting Rights Act to help enforce the 26th Amendment and expand youth access to voting.

According to Warren the purpose of the bill is to

“expand voter registration at public colleges and universities, ensure all states allow 16- and 17-year-olds to pre-register to vote, require colleges and universities to have polling places on campus and ensure that all states include student IDs as a form of voter ID.”

The ACT also prohibits residency requirements. You will not have to have lived in an state or municipality for a set period of time before being able to vote in federal elections.

It will also establish a program dedicated to youth involvement in elections and collect data on youth voter registration and election participation.

Warren also explained that

“Voting is the beating heart of our democracy. Young people are the future of America, and with voting rights under attack across the country, we must do everything we can to ensure they can exercise their right to vote.”
“My new bicameral bill with Congresswoman Williams will ensure young people aren’t left out of the voting process, and I’m thrilled to partner with her and my colleagues on this effort.”

It might not be the full answer to the problem of reluctant voters, but it is one step more than none, one step further than the talking that some feel effectively replaces actual solutions.

However, realistically, you can bring a horse to water and even raise a pail of it to the horse’s lip, but the rest is up to the horse.

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