Yeah, I was wondering the same thing about our election results wagers. Not to worry, I'm sure that I have the particulars somewhere.

I am sure you do... :D

I'm sorry to hear about your health travails and by no means surprised that you're one of those hard to kill category guys.

Awwww... You say the nicest things.. :D

Best possible results to ya.

Thank you. Sincerely..

What does surprise me is you showing up in Weigantia so soon. After embarrassing yourself with your premature post electoral crowing you went to radio silence.

You mean, like ya'all with ya'all's premature post electoral crowing in 2016? :D And the silent pall over Weigantia in the aftermath.. :D

You mean, like that??

Tell us, did Trump prevail in the end?

No, but the GOP sure did..

Tell me, how are things going for Democrats with their one-hand lead in the house and their ZERO lead (sans Horizontal Harris) in the Senate??

Democrats getting things done?? :D I mean, hell.. Democrats NEEDED the frakin' GOP to get the BIF over the finish line...

Build Back Better?? The Slogan that Basement Biden plagiarized from the UN?? DOA in the Senate.. Democrats can't even sell their OWN plan to their OWN people!! Let alone the American people..

I may have lost a battle, but Democrats are losing the war..

Speaking of which, how about that awesome Afghanistan withdrawal? What did Basement Biden call that?? Oh yes.. "An extraordinary success.." :eyeroll:

Basement Biden took a good plan and then trashed it, thinking he knew better..

And, as the facts clearly show, the only things that Basement Biden knew how to do better is to throw our allies under the bus and get 13 brave and dedicated American troops killed..

So, yea.. I made a bum call.. Unfortunately for Democrats.. Because, w/o President Trump to make the bogey-man, Democrats have PROVEN they simply are too utterly incompetent to govern..

Democrats have so royally scroo'ed the pooch that even Democrats OWN analysis show that President Trump will be back in the Oval Office come Jan 2025 and after the 2022 mid-terms, Democrats will be the minority Party for at least a decade..

For the record, those aren't *MY* predictions.. Those are the predictions from Democrats..

I could go on and on about Democrat failures, but I need not.. One only has to read the commentaries here in Weigantia (nice ta see that lil gem o' mine is still in common usage ;D) for the past 11 months to see how badly Dems have done..

Does anybody still remember that Covid thing that Trump handled so masterfully?

Yea, cuz Biden's done such a bang up job in that category.. Yunno, it's funny..

Democrats are all about MY BODY, MY CHOICE when they want to kill babies..

But when it comes to patriotic Americans who don't want to be subjected to an experimental vaccine for a virus that has a 99%+ survival rate or patriotic Americans such as myself who have immunity, all of the sudden, Democrats are all about YOUR BODY, GESTAPO GOVERNMENT'S CHOICE....

Hypocrisy... It's not a bug in Democrat programming... It's a feature..

And is The Storm still, er, on the horizon?

Which storm are you referring to? The storm in Nov of 2022 where Democrats are going to get slaughtered so badly it's going to make the uber-shellacking of 2010 look like a fun family picnic by comparison??

That "storm"??

Let's close up this litany of facts and facts-based opinions by reviewing President Trump's successes and the country that he handed off to Basement Biden and Horizontal...

-Lowest unemployment in 50 years
-Lowest unemployment for women in 70 years
-Lowest unemployment for black and hispanic Americans... EVER
-Put the US Embassy in Israel's capital where it belongs
-Biggest civil rights boost for native and black Americans since Democrats fought tooth and nail against civil rights in the 50s and 60s
-Destroyed ISIS
-The stock market setting records
-Our Navy back up to over 300 ships (Obama let it get below 300)
-Gave Americans and American companies a tax cut
-Repealed the unconstitutional Individual mandate in the abomination known as “ObamaCare”
-Got America out of the asinine Paris Climate Change Accord
-Got America out of the even more asinine Iran Nuclear Deal
-Made America the largest producer of oil
-Made America Energy independent

And, in less than a year, Basement and Horizontal has managed to frack a lot of that up..

The only real question here is can America survive 3 more years of Basement Biden and Horizontal Harris..

Welcome back.

"I'm not back!!"
-Bill Paxton, TWISTER

Yeah, I was wondering the same thing about our election results wagers. Not to worry, I'm sure that I have the particulars somewhere.

I'm sorry to hear about your health travails and by no means surprised that you're one of those hard to kill category guys. Best possible results to ya.

What does surprise me is you showing up in Weigantia so soon. After embarrassing yourself with your premature post electoral crowing you went to radio silence. Tell us, did Trump prevail in the end? Did he and his crack team of Constitutional lawyers uncover any voting irregularities, enough to keep Trump from exceeding Reagan's monumental landslide in 1980? Does anybody still remember that Covid thing that Trump handled so masterfully? And is The Storm still, er, on the horizon?

Welcome back.

:D

I know, Michale ... hence the reference to slippery slope. I remember how dreadful a downslide can become and it scares me. Seriously!

Agreed.. But you need not worry.. I won't be around long enough for that to happen..

Hey Michale. Good to see you again, welcome back and all that....

"I'm not back!!"
-Bill Paxton, TWISTER

So where is the photo of you holding a sign saying you are wlays wrong and I am always correct... HMMMM?????

"I meant it at the time.."
"At the time!? Stanley, that was like 7 seconds ago!!"
"Well, gee.. Kinda a lot's happened since then.."
-THE ROCK

Please refresh my memory.. Kinda a lot's happened since then..

1 triple bypass, 2 chest surgeries, another pending next month, 2 bouts with COVID... I can be forgiven for not recalling the exact terms...

But I WILL point out to you...

Howz those victories werkin' out for ya'all?? :D

And how are you going to feel on 9 Nov 2022?? :D

"That's great kid.. Don't get penis-y.."
-Peter Griffin

On that point... so when are the fathers going to be held EQUALLY responsible????

When fathers are given equal rights before the birth.. The main of which is being able to stop the woman from killing his baby..

When THAT happens, then you and I can discuss equal responsibility after the birth..

If you are going to force a woman to birth an unwanted baby,

The law should, all things being equal, force the woman to birth the baby.

NO law should (or does) force the woman to be a mother after the birth..

Your argument is an emotional argument unsupported by fact..

"Once she MAKES that *choice* than she should, all things being equal, be forced to accept the responsibility for and consequences of that choice.."

Because as you and I both know in reality, all things are NEVER EQUAL.... especially when you only teach abstinence in school, not real sex education, and make birth control pills and condoms as hard to get as an abortion....

On that point... so when are the fathers going to be held EQUALLY responsible????

When are all the pro lifers going to start caring about the baby AFTER it is born???? Not JUST UP UNTIL birth ONLY.

If you are going to force a woman to birth an unwanted baby, even against medical advice for birth defects etc. then all pro lifers should be held responsible with their TAX MONEY as well... for child care, medical care, infant nutrition, welfare support till the baby turns 18 years old. ETC. Since it became just as much THEIR decision to take control of HER WOMB, just as much as it was her decision....

"I hope he takes my comment in the affectionate and joshin' manner it was intended.. :D"

Hey Michale. Good to see you again, welcome back and all that....

But what about you honoring our bet from last year???

You said if 2 out 0f my 3 predictions came true.....

Well, ALL 3 DID... Democrats won the Presidency, kept control of the House and took control of the Senate....

So where is the photo of you holding a sign saying you are wlays wrong and I am always correct... HMMMM?????

I meant that with all the affection that Bashi is due.. And, being completely serious, he is due a lot from me..

I hope he takes my comment in the affectionate and joshin' manner it was intended.. :D

But I know you well enough to know that you knew that and were being intentionally obtuse..

Careful, there, my friend. That's what's known as a very slippery slope and we all know what's down at the bottom. Please let's not go there! :)

The idea may be obtuse but certainly not your fellow Weigantian, intentionally or otherwise. Ahem.

awesome to hear from you man. of course i disagree with you a thousand percent, but that sort of give and take is what used to make this place great, and might again.

Indeed!

A human being in the womb does not have an opportunity to file a DNR so the assumption MUST be made that the human being does, indeed, want to live..

Granted the analogy is not perfect as, in the case of a DNR, we are talking about ommission of action and in the case of abortion (baby killing) we are talking about commission of action..

But the concept and context is similar enough to allow the analogy to stand as valid..

Actually the unbroken spectrum of human life began long before humans were humans in the primordial soup.

CRS was referring to A human life... not ALL human life..

But I know you well enough to know that you knew that and were being intentionally obtuse..

Glad ta see ya haven't changed a bit, buddy.. :D

awesome to hear from you man.

Don't get used to it.. :D

of course i disagree with you a thousand percent

Which part do you disagree with??

At conception, a baby has their own unique DNA...

At 14-16 weeks, a baby has their own unique set of fingerprints...

and

It is NO LONGER the woman's body that is at issue here.. It is a distinct and unique body that is the issue..

That's all FACT.. Ergo, the opinion:

The idea of MY BODY, MY CHOICE is not, nor has EVER been factually relevant or valid..

... is factually supported..

A woman *chooses* to adopt a newborn baby... After a 3-4 months, this woman decides that a baby is too taxing on body/health and too inconvenient for her lifestyle.. Democrats think that it is perfectly acceptable for that woman to be allowed to kill her baby..

Morally speaking.. Not LEGALLY speaking.. But morally speaking that scenario has absolutely NO DIFFERENCE than the scenario where Democrats support abortion..

Perhaps you disagree with the characterization of this analogy.. I was speaking figuratively there..

"The Captain is speaking figuratively and with due allowance for that what he says is logical and I do, in fact, agree."
-Commander Spock, STAR TREK TOS, Whom Gods Destroy

Since the statement is a MORALE characterization and since morality is a highly subjective term, I would concede that there would be room for discussion on this point..

Although I know that you would never stoop to quoting polls on such an important issue but to those who would, the polls clearly show that the vast majority of Americans are against abortion at some point in the baby's formative (1-9) months.. As medical technology increases Americans are becoming more and more against abortion earlier and earlier in the formative years..

The 'viability argument' from the pro abortion crowd is a fluid and nebulous argument that loses more and more of it's potency exponentially to the increases in medical life saving technology..

There are many instances where it is permissible to kill a living human being. One relevant example is when a person is at the end of their days or in a very serious accident and those persons have a DNR on file.

A human being in the womb does not have an opportunity to file a DNR so the assumption MUST be made that the human being does, indeed, want to live..

Abortion (or baby killing) allows one human being to kill another human being SOLELY because the second human being's life is "inconvenient" to the first human being..

Let's take that to it's next logical step.. The father of the human being inside the woman's body decides that it would be too inconvenient for the father's lifestyle so the father surreptitiously gives the mother drugs that aborts the baby at 4 months against the wishes of the mother..

This is the act that abortion supporters support.. Morally, there is no difference. Either person, the mother or the father, can decide that the human being that is gestating is too inconvenient for the mother's or father's lifestyle and can decide to end that human being's life..

Abortion as birth control.. That is what the Democrat Party supports today..

but that sort of give and take is what used to make this place great, and might again.

No thank you.. It's a thankless job that reaps nothing but pain and suffering and destroys decades-long friendships. You and Liz will have to bring back the Great Weigantian Renaissance on ya'all's own... Sorry...

So hopefully that will have fixed the problem!

Thanks MyVoice, both for your generous donation and for helping me test the new button out...

OK, we now return you to your regularly scheduled comments...

:-)

-CW

Give me a minute or 20 to edit the site code...

-CW

I win; it works.

I am about to dive into the whole year's news in preparation for Friday's column, but before I did that I wanted to try something.

From comments to the pledge drive column, I thought it was time to update the donate button. So I came up with a new one:

I'm not going to replace the old one throughout the whole site until somebody tries this and tells me it works, though. Call it a "beta test." But if this does work, I'll go back and get rid of the old one and paste this new-and-improved version in its place. Hopefully this will fix any problems anyone's been having...

Let me know! Thanks!

:-)

-CW

learn your adverbs. "legally" a person just means the point at which the law has traditionally recognized a collection of cells as being entitled to the constitutional rights of a sentient being. a human fetus is not an "illegal" person, it's just not considered by law to be a person at all.

@michale,

awesome to hear from you man. of course i disagree with you a thousand percent, but that sort of give and take is what used to make this place great, and might again.

JL

Ok, forget "murder". After all, I realize this is the age of the euphemism. Let's go with 'Taking a human (or chicken) life'. How's that?

Actually the unbroken spectrum of human life began long before humans were humans in the primordial soup.

I think the real question is when does the human animal become the human being. That question varies depending on culture and religion from the moment of conception all the way up to when the human can speak. Within reason, I would think that this difference of belief would be covered by the first amendment protection of religion.

Calling it murder just feels pedantic. Do you refer to the chicken you might have for dinner as being murdered? True in the pedantic sense but not so much in common language usage or polite table manners...

What I never can support is hypocrisy, stupidity and the irrational reasoning of people trying to rationalize the irrational.

Your usage of the term "legal babies" implies that there must be also 'illegal' babies. does it not? Define 'illegal babies' for us please.

The unbroken spectrum of human life begins at conception, proceeds continuously, normally advancing or declining, until death. If that death is induced by external forces, that represents killing, murdering, or some such, regardless of any other name you put to it. And creating fancy but, except for medical purposes, not meaningful terminology for any stage of the progression does not render it a single degree less than human.

I have never been much of an abortion activist.. Way back when, back when Democrats were at least PARTIALLY sane and PARTIALLY morale, they were of the opinion that baby killing should be "Safe, Legal & Rare"..

I was perfectly content to ride the pine under those circumstances..

But when the Democrat Party took a hard Left into insanity, when Democrats wanted to #CELEBRATE their baby killing, when Democrats wanted to #SHOUT OUT their infanticide.... well, that just royally pissed me off..

And here we are...

Postulate the following scenario..

A woman *chooses* to adopt a newborn baby... After a 3-4 months, this woman decides that a baby is too taxing on body/health and too inconvenient for her lifestyle.. Democrats think that it is perfectly acceptable for that woman to be allowed to kill her baby..

Morally speaking.. Not LEGALLY speaking.. But morally speaking that scenario has absolutely NO DIFFERENCE than the scenario where Democrats support abortion..

The idea of MY BODY, MY CHOICE is not, nor has EVER been factually relevant or valid..

At conception, a baby has their own unique DNA...

At 4-6 weeks, a baby has their own unique heartbeat...

At 14-16 weeks, a baby has their own unique set of fingerprints...

It is NO LONGER the woman's body that is at issue here.. It is a distinct and unique body that is the issue..

Women DO have the freedom of choice here.. A woman has the CHOICE to participate in an activity that could possibly create a baby...

I fully and 1000% support that choice..

Once she MAKES that *choice* than she should, all things being equal, be forced to accept the responsibility for and consequences of that choice..

This is the MORAL and ethical position to hold..

you're kidding, right?

@caddy,

stucki thinks trump was awful too.

fetuses aren't legally babies, and haven't been since the invention of science. the thing junior high schoolers dissect in biology class isn't a "baby pig," it's a "fetal pig." in order for any mammal to be considered a baby, it's got to be able to survive in air.

but the issue is muddied by the fact that pregnant people frequently refer to their fetuses as babies, perhaps in the hopes that the fetus will make it safely to babyhood.

JL

No, it's not "murder."

It's been called abortion rather than murder for the thousands of years that women have used it to terminate unwanted pregnancy.

No, it's not "infants" nor "unborn babies" nor anything else besides fetuses. The huge difference being whether born or not.

Changing the meaning of words to support imposing your own religious views on all Americans is what we have here.

Freedom of religion is meaningless without freedom from other people's religion.

And it's not like the anti-First Amendment crown will ever accomplish anything more than making it more difficult and dangerous for poor women in red states to get an abortion. If your Pastor knocks up the Church Secretary d'ya really believe they won't quietly get an abortion? Don't even get me going on your fake-President Trump.

What other characterization could there possibly be??

Inflation is neither transitory nor temporary in this economy, and no president of any party has a meaningful degree of control over it. Price inflation is the direct doing of the Fed Res Bank, which responds in some degree to the legislative and executive branches of gov't, but mostly tries (often in vain) to use manipulation of the monetary system to achieve full employment.

But go ahead and laud the state of the economy in order to fool the voters. They're actually mostly stupid/gullible enough to believe it.

The majority of Americans have done the right thing, are vaccinated and are taking their children to get vaccinated. Why doesn't the Democratic Party want to be the fierce cheerleader of us and the preachers against the "sin of refusal" for those who don't? (No religious affiliation required.)
Two talking points that should be part of every Democratic candidate's stump speech:
1) The GOP has become the party of the Grim Reaper, the virus-enabling party. Anti-mask, anti-vaccine, and anti-science means that residents in "Trump country" are getting sick and dying of a deadly virus at startling higher rates. (NPR has the news, if you want to look it up).
2) If "it's the economy, stupid", Democrats should scream from the rooftops, over and over, that fear of a deadly virus negatively impacts the economy. The arrival of the Delta variant drove markets and spending down. The same with the (over-hyped?) Omicron variant. So if you want to 'return to normal', get angry at those who , by denying science and thwarting public health policies, usher in the 'waves' of infection and death - of course, empowered and cheered on by Republican governors like Texas' and Florida's.