Roe, Roe, Roe your Boat

I was trying to come up with a good argument that wouldn't piss people off for this but here we are.  
Doesn't matter what side of the coin I come down on on this one I'm going to be pissing someone off.  
Roe v.s. Wade.  
Going to keep this as simple as possible because I woke up randomly and apparently won't be able to go bac to sleep until I get this thought bubble popped. 

Abortions should be legal. 
The law, really doesn't need changed on a national level.  
And letting smaller areas make them more restrictive is a logical fallacy 

Here's why. 

If you prevent abortions then you are agreeing that the government should have a say over how your children should be raised.  

The proponents that are against women's rights...
Let's be honest here, abortion is just the scary beat stick being used around many larger issues concerning women's rights as decision making, autonomous, individuals.  
These proponents are also against teaching actual sex education in public schools. 
These same proponents want to defund support programs that do and would go to individuals that would need help with many of the things that come with or around situations that warrant an abortion. 
Public Mental Health
Public Education
Welfare programs for funding and things. 

The logical fallacy is strait forward. 
Either keep Roe V Wade as is or
agree that raising a child should be 100% state funded from childhood to adult hood. 
Food, housing, medical needs, educational needs.   
The whole enchilada. 
If you are going to tell a potential mother weighing their health and survivability against a child's health and survivability that they have no right to make, arguably, one of the hardest and most traumatic decisions in their life...
By that logic...
You have zero financial responsibility over the child once they are born.
You also have zero decision making power on what should be done with or for that child until that child is an adult.
Logic is a cold and hard. 

My personal thoughts are pretty strait forward on the matter. 
I have never met, or heard of, a person that has had more than one abortion. 
And arguably, if they were the type to do such a thing as a "form of birth control"  as many argue abortion is being used.   
They are already 
Using birth control in detriment to their own body so that they can avoid being put in the position of abortion being an option in the first place.
Or are so dead set against having children have gotten a hysterotomy  or a tubal ligation. 
It is none of my business about what decisions an individual, male or female, makes concerning their own care.  Especially if that decision is made where medical professionals agree to perform the procedure under medically safe circumstances.  

Lastly, and I'm being blunt as hell here.

If your argument is a religious one, for any reason what so over, on this topic.
Get.
Just, got sit in your corner and hush up.
We live in the United States.  
Where, at it's founding, there was supposed to be a firm separation between church and state. 
This is a state level, or government level, decision.   
Until churches and religious organizations start paying taxes on their proceeds. 
Until religious contributions and donations are no longer tax exempt then religious bias and input should have zero bearing on how any law is passed, especially in concerns to in individuals rights. 

Women are not property. 

Abortions, not matter how you feel about them, are a medical a procedure made by and agreed to by consenting adults where the health, physical and mental, are weighed and taken into consideration long before the decision is ever made. 

Or
If you want me to put it more simply.
You want to make abortions illegal and take that choice away from a woman?
Then give up your guns.
Right Now.
Because you are of a belief that no one should have the right to make a life or death choice without consent of the larger whole. 
Sheesh, now there's a rallying cry for the cause.
I'll give up my uterus when you give up your guns.
>.<

I'm going back to bed, if I can at this point.

Being woke up by this non sense when it was fairly decided over forty years ago and the data shows that the abortion rate has gone down and survivability of mothers and children during birth has gone up. 

We don't need to "Be fruitful and multiply anymore."   
We're on the verge of being overpopulated, and already are in a lot of places.

I'd apologize for the bluntness, but yeesh.  
No, I don't apologize for the bluntness. 
I might give it prettier words if/when asked in a larger forum but the stance stays the same.

It is a medical decision made between a woman and their healthcare professionals.  
Everybody else can bugger off. 
Also, planned parenthood does what they can to avoid that nonsense from the start. 
Hence the word PLANNED, to help and individual, or couple, make wise decisions concerning the raising of a family.
It's almost 99% the purpose of the organization.  
Making sure that people are doing what's right for their already existing or potential children. 
Am I the only person in the flibbin world that pays attention to mission statements and then follows up with a check up on that organizations efficacy to that mission statement!?! 
Sure feels like it sometimes.

What was I supposed to be doing again!?
Oh, right, sleeping. 
Because I'm still trying to find a peaceful solution for a centuries old conflict. 
Common, Supreme Court,  can we not relitigate whether or not a woman is property of their husband and/or patriarch of their family?
We outlawed slavery (or at least were supposed to have, still a lot of things to be settled on that one) over 150 years ago. 

Never mind, guess I'm not sleeping...
Back to work. 

Copy Right?

 I needed to take a break and just be for awhile.   
I've spent the last couple of months digging deep into the lore of a game that I love to play and trying to find other people that want to find a way making a living playing video games. 
With little to no avail. 
The big thing that is getting to me is that my body just isn't holding up the way that it should.   It's not the age, just all the damned injuries. Waking up wanting to vomit from the pain.  Having several days in a row without migraines just turn around an have to spend an entire day sitting in the dark and waiting for it to pass. 

I started crunching data for my papers again.   Little bits here and there, letting half an ear listen to what's going on in the larger world and formulating responses to it. 

I guess that's the thing that really gets to me sometimes, is that I've never really had anyone to talk about these things with.   Not in any depth, or for any period of time. 
"I don't want to talk about that."
"How can you spend your time reading about that."
"It's none of your business so stay out of it."
"That's so boring."
"I don't understand half of what you're saying."
 "If people just.." and fill in the blank with an over simplified answer based on their own personalized experience. 

Are all things that I used to hear when I tried talking to people about my research and odd interests.  
That's the thing, I know there are people out there that are interested in economics and larger national and world issues.  People that actually want to help and find ways to  better the community around them.  
I've just spent most of my life around people that didn't.   That discouraged doing all of that. 
And it's worn on my a lot over the years. 
The thing is, many people look at the rich and famous and go "ooo, I want to be like them."  and I look at journalist and scientists and say "I want to work with them."  

"Well, you know, if you just stopped being lazy."
"Stop whining and learn a trade."
Call me lazy one more time Motha Fucka.  
Sometimes I wish there was a me suit that I could have people wear for a day and see how they do. 
Much in the same way that when I was learning about child development and things there was a pregnancy suit to wear. One that put pressure on kidneys and represented the extra weight etc.  Granted it didn't really give you the experience of the hormones and what not, but the physical discomforts at least.
"Yeah dude, wear this for a day then come with me and do what I do."

Granted I've pretty much refused to do of late. 
Well, refused to do the outside at least.
I've been doing the inside. 
Working on responses to what's going on in the larger world and trying to figure out if it's time to use the reigns or time to give the horse it's head. 
Again, no one really to talk to about these things with.  
No one interested enough to dig into it with.  So I content myself with listening to podcasts and info dumps to help keep the brain crunching on the larger papers I've been working on. 

"Haven't seen you writing anything."
Oh, I've been writing and composing.  
But for some of these issues... 
The abortion rights issues.
The Israeli/Palestinian conflicts.
Gun rights legislation.
 and a few other topics I'm really trying to choose my words carefully.
Not that I'm overly worried about my personal thoughts on the issues coming out.  I've never really been shy about those.  More because I want to make sure that any recommendations I put out into the universe are based on facts and evidence rather than my own skewed perspective. 
I think, actual writing of those things I've gotten about ten or so pages done. 
 Don't ask my how many words that is, I don't count, I just write.
After chewing on research, news reports, and composing/re composing how to write it and what I'm going to say.
I'm weird, I talk it out with myself long before my fingers ever touch the keys of the computer.

I just hope the kids, I say kids because I'm hitting that age that even people in their twenties seem like kids with boundless energy to me, don't take it personally that I blipped.  I was,  getting to comfortable letting my thoughts and emotions out and they've all got more than enough of their own problems to have to listen to my whining and complaining as my immune system kicks the shit out of me and it gets closer to that time of year.

Yeah, that time of year...*sigh*

One thing I do know, though, after the past couple of months attempting to be a social person...

...at as social as a world pandemic, crippling social anxiety, and isolation allow one to be is that I'm still crap at it. Trying to set boundaries while still being active, especially in the gaming community is difficult.  

The one blessed thing about the kids that I've been gaming with is that even though they've heard me elude to the nonsense that's pretty well public knowledge at this point I've only broke down crying once. Though I think I got the mic muted before I did. 
As the years pass tears still happen. 
Less often.
Not for nearly as long.
But they still fall. 
I don't think that part will ever stop.
Part of me wishes it would.
But then the other part of me knows that if it doesn't make me cry anymore it means I've forgotten the good of all of it.  
The smiles, the love, and the music.

I got myself a couple of transformers to open this year.
Jazz and Elita. 
They look like they're super poseable too.

Okay, enough emotions.
Back to work.

The Wrong Side of Right

 Here we are, almost halfway through 2021 and a little less than halfway through projections I made almost six years ago now. 

I still have a hard time grasping a lot of it.   Still trying to figure out what my place in everything really is.   So I sit here, bouncing back and forth between working on fantasy stories, fan fiction for the games I play, and trying to formulate comprehensible arguments for the various policies and movements I'd like to see make headway in my life time. 

I only pick and peck at the news right now, trying to keep my head out of it and focused on the long term. 
You see, everyone was debating about the "second wave" of the Pandemic.   Thinking that it was the bump in cases as holidays passed and the regular flu seasons came and went.   But the truth is, that the pandemic responses may not have entirely curbed the covid issues but they did also put dents in other illness curves that usually rise heavily through the winter months.   I still haven't looked over the compiled data from the past few months but I've got a shiny quarter that says flu cases and other similar issues, though not completely mitigated  were suppressed to an extent. 
The support networks put in place to combat food shortages and things during the pandemic carrying over to shelter and food supplies for the winter months off setting some of the spikes in deaths that happen from neglect and homelessness during the colder months in the U.S. 
The only reason I make this assumption without seeing the data is because our hospitals were not overrun during the winter and early spring. 

But the second wave has hit.  
Everyone looks at the small scale, the local cases, the statewide cases, and sometimes the national cases as the litmus for how things are going. 
But no. 
The Second wave is striking India. 
I don't recall at this moment, a couple of short hours before sunrise local, which countries I anticipated the full force of the second wave to hit but India did fall into it. 
There is a part of me that hopes that the rest of the international community was able to get their shit together in time to be able to help. 
Or if the vaccine distributions are just barely enough to cover the needs of last summer. 
My heart goes out to the Indian People and the hardships they are going through right now.   Listening helplessly as I am to the news I'm allowing myself right now and trying to formulate distribution strategies that might help alleviate...any of it. 

But, it's May, and it's time for me to be getting back to work.  Digging in to where the local and national responses are and what their projections are looking like. 

I always cautioned A year and half best case, three years on the outside for a disease like this to run it's course.  It's time like this that I hate being right.  A part of me really hoped that the world had everything under control by the end of winter.  But that cold, analyzing, logic that does the hard maths knew better. 

So this weekend I let myself transition back into research  mode.  Day by day picking up a bit more of the materials and research necessary to help formulate strategies and take into account where we are after a year and a half of something that feels eerily close to the new normal.

From what little I've let myself see over the past month it seems the new administration is following my strategies, in broad strokes at least, focusing on generating the funding for economic recovery and infrastructure refurbishment.    
I commend them for pushing for it.  I really do. 
Hell, the conservative side of me winces every time I hear the price tags but that was also in the projections. 

The plan is to rebuild infrastructure systems that went too long without being proper maintained.   And rebuilding is almost more expensive than building fresh.  Largely because of the labor costs, the training costs, the time commitments. 
But if we do it right then it will be worth every penny and the pay off incalculable until some century later  when historians are looking back and talking about the hard sell that had to be made to shift a nation.  

That's funny part. 
Many old school, small government types fear that the changes will be bringing big government into the world.   When the whole goal is simply to facilitate the building of the infrastructure needed to maintain the freedoms everyone strives for. 
Mobility.
Safety.
The ability to pursue ones goals and compete in a competitive marketplace.  
There's a lot of fear about "The Rise of Socialisms" or the "Marxist Movement" 
Truth is, checks and balances are built into a truly Democratic society.   
Hell, even though the "Founding Fathers" of the U.S. were still operating under colonialist ideals and expansionist visions the ideas were solid.  
It's just our job, now, to apply them to everyone. Rather than just the select few that many of the systems were initially designed for. 

First we all have to survive this Pandemic.
A harsh reminder from Mother Nature that political borders and fences mean little when it comes to illness, hunger, and common decency to one another. 

2021 might be a harder year than 2020 was.  And 2022 does not promise to be a cake walk.  
But something started, really started last year and transitions are hard, facing truth and real justice will and is testing the resolve and integrity of everyone involved.  But from what I've seen The American people, that Native People, the people of the whole damned world have risen to the occasion. 
And even though we still have a long hill to climb, and a lot of old hardships to settle, just look at how far we've come.   Talk to some of the older generations, and ask them "did you ever think you'd see some of this in your life time?" Really ask them.  And don't be too surprised when the only response you get is watery eyes. 

Don't give up hope, it's been a rough ride and it's not going to get easier any time soon.
We still have a lot of big issues to address. 
Immigration,
making sure the justice system continues to reform it's self, 
And right now...
making sure India survives this Pandemic along with the rest of us.

But it will get better. 
It has gotten better. 
Maybe just a little, but a little is better than not at all.
And hopefully, by the end of the Decade....
MOON BASE!!
I chuckle as I type that, because a silly as it sounds that one little bit of hope keeps me going through all the everything else.

Stay Safe