After the Dutch Grand Prix, I wrote about how the 2022 season is looking like a damp squib, and five weeks later, with four races remaining, Max Verstappen has become a 2-time world champion with a potential 112 points remaining, it seems we’ve exchanged Mercedes dominance for Red Bull dominance.
I don’t want to take anything away from Max Verstappen, he is clearly one of the best drivers on the current grid, I’d say that only Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton are his equals. But, the reality is it’s the car that makes a world champion. Mercedes have not been near wins this season, and Ferrari has made mistakes, costing Leclerc points, but in recent races have been off the pace of Red Bull in race trim.
As the Japanese Grand Prix ended, it was thought that the title battle would go onto the US Grand Prix in two weeks’ time with Leclerc finishing second on the road, and half points were thought to be awarded. But while Johnny Herbert was conducting the post-race interviews, it was announced that Max was the world champion as news broke that Leclerc had been handed a 5-second time penalty for leaving the track and gaining an advantage at the final chicane, promoting Sergio Perez up to 2nd place.
Even in the cool-down room, there was some confusion on whether Verstappen was the champion or not, because of the points situation, with just a little over half the race distance being run. But the FIA interpretation of the rule is that reduced points would only be awarded if the race is suspended and cannot be resumed. This was obviously not the case, as the race finished under green flag conditions meaning full points were awarded, making Verstappen a 2-time world drivers champion.
As a neutral, there is nothing to add, other than I’m disappointed to see another championship decided with multiple races remaining, this is not what the pinnacle of motorsport should be in my opinion.
Aside from the race result, during the safety car period and red flag, while drivers were still on the track, out of the gloom, Pierre Gasly came across recovery vehicles on the track seconds after the red flag as he was catching up to the back of the pack due to pitting for full wet tires. This is particularly jarring as it was eight years ago that Jules Bianchi crashed in similar circumstances, which sadly led to his passing nine months later, and like Bianchi, the FIA blamed the driver, in this case, Gasly for going too fast.
After an amazing 2021 season, with Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen going hammer and tongs, coming down to the final lap of the final race, 2022 has turned into a massive disappointment after the first couple of rounds where Verstappen and Charles Leclerc exchanged race wins. Since then Max Verstappen has won 8 of the 11 races, holding a 109 point lead over Perez and Leclerc, Verstappen could sit out the next 4 races and still be in the championship lead, of course, he won’t do that!
With Ferrari looking super competitive in pre-season, and the first four race victories being shared equally between Verstappen and Leclerc, I was really looking forward to another exciting season. But, with Verstappen claiming eight victories to Leclerc’s one over the next 11 races, the excitement has fizzled out.
After seven years of Mercedes dominance, and four years of Red Bull dominance before that, it’s extremely disappointing that after one season of parity between two teams, we are back to Red Bull dominating. If you are a fan of a team or driver in the dominant car, this is great, for people like me, a neutral, a racing fan, this is terrible, and what am going to write next will definitely trigger some people.
I would like to see F1 become a spec series, where everyone has the same chassis and power unit, where team strategy and driving skill decide races, not who has the best car. Then we can do away with stats deciding, in some people’s minds, who is the best driver, the best driver is the one who wins on race day, not who has the best overall car. This is somewhat aimed at Lewis Hamilton fans who like to claim that it’s Hamilton’s skill when he wins, but the car’s fault when he doesn’t take the chequered flag first.
But a spec series won’t happen, and the perpetual one team dominating the sport will continue, while the neutrals, myself included will bitch and moan about how the title is decided by who has the best chassis/power unit combo, before the final quarter of the season starts. At least, the Dutch GP created some tinfoil hat action with Perez’ spin denying others a chance at pole position in the dying moments of Q3, and Yuki Tsunoda pitting for a loose wheel, then coming out again, only to stop four corners later, causing a VSC, which definitely benefitted Alpha Tauri’s sister team Red Bull and Verstappen.
Of course, I think it’s all nonsense, it was purely coincidental!
I signed up last week for the Ricoh360 Tours service on behalf of my employer, based on my recommendation to them. It seemed like a great deal: a year’s subscription to the 360 Tours service for $468 annually, with a free Ricoh Theta SC2 360° camera. But, the camera is a damp squib, with terrible flaring and ghosting of light sources, making it unusable in my mind, and the mind of my employer.
This is my first exploration into self-made 360° tours, and I am learning on the fly, but as soon as I got home and started piecing together my first tour, it became apparent that the free Theta SC2 camera was not good enough. As an experienced real estate photographer, I understand that flaring can be a problem if the interior is much darker than the exterior, but I have never seen flaring and ghosting this bad before.
I contacted support, and the response came back, basically saying “you’re doing it wrong”, “try a different angle”, “you can try using the Ricoh Theta app” and “some people use lightroom to edit the photos first”.
I’m not doing it wrong, I walked around with the SC2 trying different angles, live viewing from the Tours app, and flaring/ghosting was a problem from every angle. I took a photo using my Canon 6D mk2 and Sigma 12-24mm f/4 setup from the same angle, with zero flaring or ghosting. I understand a $300 camera is not going to be as good as $4,000 worth of DSLR kit, but the ghosting is unbelievably bad from the SC2.
The Ricoh Theta app does allow for manual control, and a number of shooting modes, but it crashes every time I take a photo, and I cannot access the advanced camera settings for the same reason, on my Google Pixel 4 XL. And no amount of Lightroom or Photoshop work will fix the ghosting and flaring issues, well, that’s a lie, if I put several hours into each image, I could fix it, but the point of buying the Ricoh 360 Tours solution was that it was an out of the box solution requiring very little additional editing.
The sample tour they have on their promo page is clearly not taken using the SC2 camera, which I feel should be made clear on the promo page, clearly naming the camera used to create the sample tour, I suspect it was their flagship Theta Z1, which sells for in excess of $1,100, which I suspect was further edited in Lightroom, leaving me feeling they have misrepresented the product you are actually getting.
This is speculation on my part, but it makes me wonder whether the SC2 camera package, which Ricoh values at $378 is given away for free because it’s so terrible and people return it if they paid money for it. I know that I would have immediately returned it as soon as I saw the results of its first outing.
The tour software itself is fine for the most part, however, there is one major issue, the tour path feature is somewhat flawed, setting up the path is intuitive, but the software tries to figure out where the paths are on other photos, and it misses by a mile, it thinks that the guest bathroom is in the lake, which is the opposite direction to where it’s actually located. But as it’s software, hopefully, Ricoh will fix that.
The AI video maker is not good either, I tested it, and the video is all over the place, with weird angles and zooms, and sudden spins. The poor AI video-making capabilities are not important, I make my own videos from the photos I take with my DLSR, using the Ken Burns pan and zoom technique to create movement.
The end result is we have purchased another 360° camera, an Insta360 ONE X2, which is perfectly fine for $480 including tax and a 64GB microSD card. Not exactly the same quality as my DSLR setup, but the exposure is good, and there is no flaring or ghosting. I’d love to have one of those professional grade 360° cameras that costs $4,000+, but as this is something new the company I work for is experimenting with, spending $4k for a camera is probably a little much, but maybe one day my employer will buy one.
Here’s the continuation of the pain management saga, read my previous blog about this subject here, 3 weeks ago, we visited Kansas Pain Management in Lawrence, Kansas for the first time, and were turned away for being 45 minutes late after a 3-hour drive. This past Tuesday, we returned to Lawrence, and it turned out that KPM does not prescribe Hydrocodone at the strength Erin takes to manage her pain.
3 weeks ago, I was super pissed at Kansas Pain Management for being so damn inflexible, when there were zero people in their office for being 45 minutes late when we had taken a day off work to make the 3-hour round trip to Lawrence. On the second visit, we arrived 50 minutes early and were seen 45 minutes before the appointment time, which showed how slow this particular office is. Anyway, if they prefer to not prescribe narcotics, that is their choice, now my anger has turned to Erin’s primary care physician Jennifer Spriggs, ARPN, operating out of Wesley on N Woodlawn Blvd in Wichita.
Why am I angry with Jennifer Spriggs you ask? well, we made two trips to Lawrence, at a cost of close to $250 for gas, food, and other incidentals, because we were referred to Kansas Pain Management by Jennifer Spriggs, telling us that they would be able to prescribe Erin’s Norco® 10. If KPM cannot prescribe Erin’s medication, they are useless to us, all other services we can get locally in Wichita.
Now Jennifer Spriggs has refused to fill Erin’s Hydrocodone prescription after sending us on a wild goose chase, so now my wife is out of pain medication completely with no ETA on when she might be able to get her prescription renewed. This is one hell of an evil punishment, and IT IS punishment for using CBD Delta 8 for some additional pain relief when her Hydrocodone does not quite take care of her pain.
Now Erin is trying to get an appointment with a local pain management clinic, as her APRN, Spriggs won’t prescribe any more Hydrocodone until she has an appointment with a new pain management office.
What Erin needs is a pain management doctor that actually is a doctor for the right reasons, someone who wants to genuinely help people, listen to their patients, and use trial and error methods to create the best solution for their patient’s care. This has been sorely lacking in Wichita pain management we have visited thus far, Kansas Pain Management excluded, as they just have a policy that does not work for us.
As things stand, without medication Erin will not be able to function after a few days of being without her Hydrocodone, which means she will have to quit her job, as she physically will not be up to it, nor safe to drive to her office and back, which is a massive blow to us financially, we’re already struggling with finances. But I am more concerned about my wife’s physical and mental wellbeing than the financial hit.
What this has done is made us realize we need to call ahead and ask questions like, do you prescribe the medication we need? what is your policy on screening, and do you have an onsite lab? As clearly, we cannot rely on doctors to give us the correct information on what their referred provider has to offer.
On Tuesday, August 2, 2022, a ballot initiative was on the ballot in the state of Kansas, pushed by the Value Them Both Coalition, a Christian conservative collective that wants to ban abortion like so many other states with Republican majorities in their state legislatures, many with trigger bans in place, which became law, as soon as the ultra-conservative US Supreme Court overturned Roe Vs Wade.
I am happy to say that Kansas voted NO to the “value them both” constitutional amendment, and it was not even close, final results show an 18% gap between the YES and NO votes. Before the vote, I was concerned that Kansas would be too conservative, and the majority of voters would vote YES to the Kansas constitutional amendment that would pave the way for the GOP majority legislature to ban abortion.
I have to say that the NO campaign did an amazing job, sending out multiple mailers in the final weeks before the vote; we personally received a least a dozen mailers in our mailbox in the past month, compared to just one from the YES campaign. They had people knocking on doors, two people came to our front door, encouraging us to vote NO, and I saw plenty of adverts online across social media.
I think that the Republicans may have screwed up, forcing women to carry a fetus to term, by way of SCOTUS, taking away their bodily autonomy. With the success of the Kansas ballot initiative, I can see a lot of Democratic groups pushing state constitutional amendments to the ballot in states that have already passed abortion bans, many with no exception for rape, incest or the health of the mother.
I’m hoping this will also affect the midterm elections, with the SCOTUS Roe Vs Wade reversal motivating people to come out and vote, maybe for the first time ever. We know that Democrats and progressives outnumber conservatives significantly, but the right wing vote at higher percentages than the left.
With the Supreme Court decision stripping women of their rights to bodily autonomy, I am hopeful that the turnout in November will be high, with many more Democrats voting in the midterms. Literally, your rights are on the ballot, if abortion bans are allowed to stand, Obergefell (marriage equality), Griswold (contraceptives), and even Loving (interracial marriage) could all be on the line.
If the GOP regain control of the US Senate, you can bet the filibuster will be gone, and abortion will be banned federally, despite the SCOTUS state rights rheteric, they’ll uphold, or refuse to hear any challenge to a federal ban. SCOTUS is not nonpartisan, it’s 100% partisan, pushing their religious right agenda.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how pain management in Wichita had failed my wife, being dropped from two pain management offices for her CBD use, despite being upfront and honest with them, they ignored her pleas for help, and requests for alternatives, as Hydrocodone was not managing her pain.
Anyway, Wichita, apparently only has two pain management offices that prescribe narcotics, our next nearest option was in Lawrence, Kansas, whom shall remain nameless for now. Not exactly ideal as it’s a 6-hour round trip drive from where we live in Wichita, but what other option do we have?
On Tuesday, I took a day off work to drive up to Lawrence, as I knew Erin was going to be in pain as she had reached the end of her supply of Hydrocodone. And, because of her negative experiences with Wichita pain management, I really didn’t want her to have to face that journey and office visit alone.
While we were on the road, the pain management office called and asked if we could arrive earlier, obviously, we could not, 3-hour drive and all, and the person on the phone confirmed a 1:45pm appointment. After being on the road for 2 hours, and 55 minutes, we arrive at their office in Lawrence, only to be told we were 42 minutes late, and that we cannot be seen today, leaving Erin up shit creek.
What is annoying is that this was clearly a miscommunication, and they were unwilling to bend a little after a patient drove 160 miles just for the appointment. They were not busy, there was literally one other person in the office. This indicates to me that this particular Lawrence doctor’s office will be just as uncaring as the Wichita doctor’s, people don’t drive for 3 hours unless it’s extremely important.
Another little detail that was not divulged until we got there, they don’t have an onsite lab, the drug test has to be sent off to Quest Diagnostics, with a minimum turnaround time of 72 hours, this does not include weekends, so Erin would be without medication for the best part of a week. A question that occurred to me later, was after the drug test comes back, would we have to pick up a physical script from the same office? which I remind you is 2 hrs, 20 mins away if we don’t stop and use the I-35 toll road.
Driving back home, I could feel my blood pressure and anger rising, as my wife sat next to me in tears, believing she was going to be without pain medication for an undetermined period of time. I’m thankful that Erin’s primary care doctor made an exception to her not prescribing narcotics rule, to help my wife out. This solved the immediate issue, but Erin still had to make another appointment in Lawrence, which is on August 23, 1:15pm, at least this is a week before the prescription needs to be refilled.
I’m hoping that Erin can find a local alternative, maybe switching to a primary doctor that will prescribe narcotics, as a 5 to 6 hour round trip is not feasible, from a time perspective, nor a cost perspective, including gas, tolls, and food costs, Erin cannot go five hours without food, this trip cost us roughly $100.
Three weeks ago, my wife’s 2012 Ford Escape had a catastrophic failure, the radiator fan exploded taking the radiator out with it. We had that fixed at a cost of $650 for a replacement fan assembly and radiator.
We knew new tires were needed but didn’t realize that on the inside of the tire, the metal belt was exposed, that’s another $850 for 4 new tires. After driving the Escape on the new tires, the wife noticed that her car was pulling to the left while braking, which became more violent the harder she braked.
The ABS and traction control lights that were lit on the dashboard remained unresolved. The shop that replaced the radiator/fan said they plugged in an ODB2 scanner and it reported that there was a front left wheel speed sensor fault, which they didn’t fix, they cleared the codes, and drove the car a short distance, saying the lights didn’t come back on, but after a single trip to work, the ABS/TC lights came back on.
We got it back into the tire shop, I was thinking the braking issue was related to the ABS/TC lights, and that faulty wheel sensor. But no, it’s that the brake pads were completely worn down, which is surprising as we only had the rotors and pads replaced in 2019. I’m praying that this is the reason for the ABS/TC light, and not just another issue, on top of whatever is causing the ABS/TC lights on the dashboard.
Wifey’s Escape will be in the shop until Friday, so we don’t know if the ABS/TC light issue is because of the tires, so stay tuned for more updates. An additional issue is that the wheel arches on the rear of the car are rusting, because, as I discovered recently, the rear wheel liners are missing, letting water inside the inner and outer bodywork. It seems like this is the $12,000 (in 2018) car version of The Money Pit.
Update [Jul, 21 2022]: it gets worse, both lower control arms on the front are bad, which is why the tires and brakes wore out, according to the shop, I’m not a mechanic, so I’ll have to take their word for it. I just hope that this fixes the ABS and traction control light issue too. Given that this car had over 100,000 miles on it when we bought it in 2018, it looks like the previous owner elected not to do the regular maintenance, which of course, we did not know at the time of purchase. Lesson learned, if I buy another used car, I’m gonna stump up the cash for a mechanic to come to look at it before paying a cent.
Update [Jul, 22 2022]: After a new radiator and fan assembly, four new tires, new brake rotors and pads, new lower control arms, and a four-wheel alignment, the !@#$ing ABS and traction control lights are still on, meaning that particular issue is still present. In addition to this, when braking, the pedal feels soft, and there is a low-frequency hum when depressing the brake pedal about 1/3 of the way down.
While I am grateful that my father-in-law paid for these repairs, his insistence that we use his preference of shop, a shop that is down a back road that does not correlate with any street address, and only takes cash payments has been frustrating, this has been going on for over 3 weeks now. I had an appointment with Rusty Eck Ford service set for my wife’s car, but she decided to go with her father’s choice, and one of the major issues still exists. I know that Rusty Eck would have been more expensive, but, based on my experience, it would have been fixed the first time, and we could move on with our lives.
But now, this saga continues, I don’t like my wife driving a car with the ABS light on, I don’t take risks with brakes and tires, if it needs service, the money is not important, even if we have to use credit cards to pay for it, I cannot replace my wife if she is killed in a wreck, for any amount of money.
My wife Erin, suffers from Fibromyalgia, Lupus, and extreme back pain due to a car wreck a decade ago, plus other medical issues. As a result of these conditions, she needs a pain management doctor to prescribe her Hydrocodone, after her primary care doctor at Ascension Via Christi dropped her due to missed appointments, which was a miscommunication, after regular trips to the ER for Lupus/Fibro flares, and having to make an appointment to see her primary care doctor sooner than her regular visit, and the later appointment was never canceled by the Ascension Via Christi admin staff as requested, which they counted as a missed appointment, and after 3 missed appointments they drop you.
Initially, Erin went to Advanced Pain Medicine located at the corner of N Oliver and E 37th St N in Wichita, which was fine at first, before Erin’s pain started to spike to a point where her Hydrocodone was ineffective. Erin’s pain management doctor increased the strength of her Hydrocodone, which helped, but ultimately became ineffective with the combination of Fibro, Lupus, and multiple herniated discs.
As Erin’s pain increased, she found herself bouncing between her rheumatologist, who said that pain management needed to help her with her increased pain, only for pain management to send her back to her rheumatologist to help with her pain, while her primary care doctor, refuses to prescribe narcotic based pain medication. As Erin’s doctors passed the buck, in regard to Erin’s growing pain, this led to more frequent visits to the ER for pain relief, and for the most part, Wesley Woodlawn ER was amazing.
The one time that Wesley Woodlawn ER failed was because of one doctor, Dr. Brian L Debrot, who said Erin was using the ER for pain management, instead of going to a pain management doctor, and he put a block on further treatment. In a way, Erin was using the ER for pain management, as her pain management doctor would not help. When your doctors refuse to help, what option do you have other than to turn to the Emergency Room when your pain is so bad that killing yourself is a viable option?
In an effort to reduce the number of visits to the ER, Erin started taking Delta 8 in the evenings to help manage the pain and allow her to sleep. Delta 8 in combination with Hydrocodone, and infusions from her rheumatologist, kept her pain to a level where she could tolerate it better, although every 3 to 6 weeks, her pain would get out of control and we would end up in the ER for further pain relief.
Erin’s consumption of Delta 8, led to her being dropped by Advanced Pain Medicine because they found traces of Marijuana in her system. Let’s be clear, Delta 8 is 100% legal in the state of Kansas, and Erin does not smoke Marijuana, but that does not matter to pain management doctors, they drop you like you’re abortion in a red state, instead of having empathy, suggesting alternative pain medication options.
After being dropped by Advanced Pain Medicine, Erin was referred to ICT Internal Medicine & Pain Management, located at K-96 and N Ridge Rd, by her primary care doctor. And after her first visit there with Dr. Baoluan Nguyen, she did not want to return to their office, he was very aggressive, dismissing her pain, and lorded it over Erin that he had the power over whether she was in pain or not.
I did some research on Dr. Baoluan Nguyen, and his reviews online are very mixed, most women gave 1-star or 2-star reviews, explaining that they were treated as my wife was, while men often gave 4-star or 5-star reviews. Which, this is my opinion, not a statement of fact, indicates that Dr. Baoluan Nguyen is a misogynist, Erin’s friend had the same experience with this doctor, so much so, that neither Erin nor her friend wanted to visit him alone, so, they attended each other’s visits together for their own safety.
ICT Internal Medicine & Pain Management ended up dropping Erin, for a minimal amount of THC in her system when she did the pee test at her last visit. This is despite being open about her Delta 8 use, and asking about a different pain medication after the last visit when they told her that they had found THC in her system, they ignored her request, instead electing to drop her, rather than have empathy, and find another drug that would help. Any doctor that is content to see people in pain is not a doctor in my book.
The person in the shop where Erin gets her Delta 8, explained that he and his partner gave up on pain management, having gone to the same pain management doctors, instead deciding to rely solely on THC-based products to manage their pain, basically getting high as fuck to manage pain. What an absolutely fucked up system the US has where doctors lack empathy and drop patients in a heartbeat.
So, now, Erin has found a third pain management doctor, but this one is in Lawrence, Kansas, which is 161 miles from where we live in Wichita, which will use up a tank of gas for the round trip, at a cost of around $70. This is because all closer pain management doctors don’t take our medical insurance, which is crazy, as we have Blue Cross, Blue Shield, one of the larger insurance companies in the country.
As Erin’s husband, the person who sees what pain she suffers every single day, it has me feeling incredibly angry and ready to start punching people in the face. I understand that there are tight controls on narcotic-based drugs, but this is out of control, these doctors, the ones we have visited so far, never take the time to fully assess and listen to what their patients are saying, prescribe different drugs, to find something that works for the patient, and drop patients without giving it a second thought.
Three weeks ago I wrote about how the increased cost of living is crippling, financially and mentally. Yesterday, another blow came in the form of my wife’s car, which we bought used just four years ago, suffering, what I suspect to be a bad radiator leak after her radiator fan exploded all of the sudden.
I was getting ready for bed when my daughter comes in and says something is wrong with momma’s car. So I rush out to the car to see plastic pieces all over the floor in a significant puddle of fluid. Initially, my thought was that after a recent oil change, the shop that did it didn’t tighten down the drain plug enough and that the plastic pieces were unrelated, maybe it was something my wife had run over backing out.
Looking under the car, it was clear that the fluid was leaking from the front of the car, in front of the engine, and there was a horrible grinding sound. My wife popped the hood of the car, and the first thing I noticed is how hot it was under the hood, after just 2 – 3 minutes of running, then I notice fluid spray over the front of the engine. I thought that maybe there was an issue with the air conditioning system, so I had my wife turn off the A/C, but that did not stop the terrible grinding sound or the fluid leaking.
Eventually, the grinding sound stopped, and the engine ticked over nicely, but after another couple of minutes, while I was inspecting the engine bay with a flashlight, the grinding sound started up again, and I see fluid spray into the engine bay, which caused significant smoke to billow from under the hood.
This is in addition to a secondary issue of the ABS and traction control lights turning on and off, staying on longer each drive, but that did not affect the brakes, and ABS seemed to be working fine. But, as we will have to have the car diagnosed for the suspected radiator issue, let’s have that issue looked into too.
It’s going to cost $220 just to get the problem diagnosed at Rusty Eck Ford in Wichita, I went ahead and made an appointment to get the car in for service, but that won’t be until July 12, 2022, just under two weeks away, leaving my wife driving my car as I work from home. This frankly makes me nervous as my wife has been in 4 wrecks in the past five years, one of which was in my car the last time she drove it, none of these wrecks were her fault, but she does seem to be a magnet for Wichita’s bad drivers.
We’re already in a bad financial situation, and it’s going to get worse, my wife needs her own car, so fixing it is the only option with the current insane car prices, 20-year-old cars are going for $15-20,000. The cost of the fix will have to go on credit cards, causing further financial hardship for my family. I’m at the point of thinking, let’s spend the last $9 in my bank account on lottery tickets and pray my numbers come up!
Seven weeks ago, a draft opinion on Roe Vs Wade was leaked from the Supreme Court, published by Politico, and that draft opinion has now become a reality, with a 5 – 4 decision striking down the landmark ruling. Samual Alito, Clarence Thomas, and the three Trump appointees, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett voted to overturn Roe Vs Wade, while liberals Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, and chief justice John Roberts voted to uphold the 1973 decision.
This is not about being pro-life, because we know that the religious conservative right is not pro-life, if they were, they would financially support young mothers and their children, so they don’t have to live below the poverty line, and they would do more to control guns, so 10-year-olds don’t get gunned down in school. It’s about control, mostly old white Christian men wanting to subjugate women.
It all boils down to religion, a form of control, in my opinion, as much as the five Supreme Court justices claim it’s about the constitution, and not about religion, if that is the case, then why did the law stand for almost 50 years? It’s because it has taken this long for the right to push this many religious zealots to the Supreme Court, previous SCOTUS’ has upheld Roe, despite many challenges over the years.
If you think this is where the current SCOTUS attack on Americans’ rights will end now that Roe has been overturned, you’re mistaken. Clarence Thomas, the justice with the seditious wife, has indicated that contraception (Griswold vs. Connecticut), private sexual acts, aimed squarely at the LGBTQ+ community (Lawrence v. Texas), and same-sex marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges) is on the chopping block, which all hinged on the same 14th amendment to the US constitution, that Roe v. Wade relied upon.
Of course, the Democrats had their fundraising emails ready to go the moment the decision to take away women’s rights to bodily autonomy was announced. I say don’t give the Democrats a fucking penny, they control the House, the Senate, and the White House, they could kill the filibuster, and pass an equivalent law to Roe right now, they don’t need a single Republican vote. This bipartisanship line from the likes of President Biden, Joe Manchin, and Kyrsten Sinema needs to stop, bipartisanship is long dead!
President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi have been in front of the press saying Roe Vs Wade is on the ballot this November, in an effort to mobilize the electorate to vote in the midterm elections. Literally, in 2010 and 11, Democrats had a super majority in Congress, but Obama and his vice president Joe Biden didn’t think codifying Roe was a high priority, so they can fuck all the way off. I have no faith that even if there were 60 Democrat senators that anything with being done, Democrats are feigning outrage for the fundraising, don’t fall for it, don’t give them a single red cent of your money!
At this point, there is no fixing the US of A, it has become a theocracy, despite the separation of church and state clause of the constitution. Time to turn it off, wipe the memory and start over with a new set of rules with specific terms, not up for interpretation, with built-in maximum term limits for congresspeople, and federal judges and have a true UNITED states, if red states don’t like it, please kindly fuck off and become your own country, losing all that funding from the blue states, via the federal government.
