I Was Young and Inexperienced Once, Too.

On October 1, I was driving south on 6th Avenue, and when I approached about 98th St, there was a girl who had stopped at the STOP sign, preparing, it seemed, to cross 6th Avenue.  Nope.  She pulled onto 6th Avenue, just as I got to the intersection, and she turned south.  (There's a designated lane for people at that street, who want to merge south, but she didn't use it.)  I slammed on my brakes, but there wasn't time to avoid her in the intersection.  I was unhurt, and I got out of my car to see if she was OK.  She had a passenger who was, as I estimated, her slightly younger sister.  My guess was that the driver was in her late teens, or maybe about 20.  Yes, she and her sister were OK.  Metal and plastic are one thing, but people are more important.

I was trying to find a diplomatic way to ask her this, but the best I could do was to say I didn't mean to be provocative or criticizing, but did she think of herself as at fault.  Yes, she did.  Would she tell that to someone else, if necessary?  Yes, she would.

Her mother soon arrived (I assumed she or her sister called their mother), and so did two MSV cruisers.  I don't know who called them.  I have no idea what the other driver told them, but they allowed me to leave, and told me the fault was not mine.

My insurance and the other driver's (her parents') insurance was the same -- GEICO -- so the next step was to get an estimate of the damage.  Oddly, my car is aluminum, which is light weight and soft, and the other car was steel, which is heavy and hard.  But the other car had far more damage than did mine.  I could drive my car, but the other driver couldn't drive hers.  So I eventually made an appointment with the GEICO estimator, and he estimated the cost of repairs to be just over $1900, which they sent me.  If it turned out to be more than that, I should contact GEICO.  This interaction took place at a car repair shop, but he said he was prohibited from "steering" me to that shop.  I'd have to find one on my own.

The last time I needed any body work done was several years ago, and I relied on one of my friends to recommend a shop.  His son worked there.  I called them again this time, and the owner has retired, and the shop is no longer in business.  But my friend recommended another shop at about 154th and W Dixie.  So I went there.  We took a good deal of time to do the paperwork, after which I started walking home.  I got about a block or so before the shop called me to say they'd called Tesla, and Tesla will only sell parts to me, not to the body shop.  They're not authorized by Tesla.  I mean...  I have a contract with GEICO.  I signed a contract with the body shop.  I have no contract with Tesla.  What do they care to whom they'll sell parts?  And why would I have to go to a Tesla dealership to buy and cart away parts that might not fit in my car?  There was no one with whom to argue (I tried calling Tesla, but they were intransigent.  I told them this was the first Tesla I ever bought, and it would be the last.  Yeah, next.)  But there was a guy in that shop, and he told me he had worked with a Tesla authorized shop very near 135th and NE 16th.  And I should talk to Betty.  So I went there.  Betty wasn't there, but yup, they could do it, but it would take 3-4 months for them to receive the parts.  It was a long walk home, and I had to take, for who knows what reason, the charging cables from my rear trunk.  The damage was to the front bumper.  Betty called me the next day to tell me I would have to take everything out of the rear trunk, and everything out of the back seat, and on the floor in front of the back seat.  Enough was enough -- why didn't someone tell me that yesterday? -- and I took an Uber ride to the shop, and retrieved my car.  I didn't know what I was going to do about this (which also involved that my AC no longer worked, because some wires in the front bumper had been severed), but it wasn't going to include these garages.

Then, it dawned on me.  As much as I didn't want to do this, I decided to find a Tesla body shop, and have them do it.  The closest one is on Sunrise Boulevard in Ft Lauderdale.  Right: nowhere near here.  But I went up there, and they could get the parts in about two weeks, and I'd have to rely on a gas-burning rental for about two more weeks.  All paid for by GEICO.  I had run out of options, so I agreed.  And I came back home until they would call me to tell me they had received the parts.  Maybe in two weeks.

Probably the next day (Thursday), I was at Target, at the Tesla supercharger, when this guy in a Corvette stops in front of my car, points to the damage, and asks me if I want him to fix it.  His 19 year old son was in the car, cruising around, learning how dad does business.  And dad will fix it now, in front of my house (I had a couple of minutes left until I was fully recharged.)  And if dad doesn't fix the car to my satisfaction, I don't have to pay him.

If you can think of a better arrangement than this, you can tell me what it is.  I finished charging, and I went home, dad and son behind me in their Corvette.  Dad, whose name is Chris, got to work, replaced nothing, and simply applied the artistry he learned from his father, and presumably hoped he was teaching his son.  He used a blowtorch and epoxy, and paint, and fixed things.  He didn't throw away the bumper, or anything else.  And he quoted me a price of $1500 (I had already received $1900+ from GEICO).  He finished the body work, and it looked perfect.  I reminded him that my AC didn't work, and the thermometer inside the car, showing the outside temperature, didn't either, and they still didn't when he was done.  He said I should wait 24 hours for them to "reset," and call him Saturday if they didn't.  They didn't.  So he came by today (Sunday) with his son and the Corvette, and he spent significant time reconnecting the wires.  He wanted $500 more for that.  So, I was behind a little, but I got my car fixed more or less on the spot by someone who has more of a passion for fixing cars than he does for taking money.  He also told me he does various other tasks, and he suggested I hire him to pressure clean my driveway for $200, which is a low price, (unless I either find my pressure cleaner, or get it back from Derrick Murray, if he still has it).

If you have car issues, or perhaps some other related issues, you can call Chris at 786-578-3782.  His card says "Auto Body Repair, Chris the Body Man, We Buy Cars, We Are Mobile, We Come to You, Same Day Service."  It cost me a few bucks, instead of costing me nothing, but it was quick, and it was easy.  And Chris is a very nice guy.  His son, Giovanni, is quiet, but also a very nice kid.

I still feel sorry for the girl whose parents are probably mad at her, but that's how we all learn.

Pence Out

Audible gasps as Mike Pence suspends his campaign (msn.com)

DeSantis has been sinking fast.  A couple other Republicans have dropped out of the primary bid.  Now, Mike Pence is surrendering.  His euphemism was that "it's not [his] time."  (I hope for his sake that he's not holding his breath until it is his time.)  He tried to make himself appear somewhat legitimate by saying that no one who puts him- or herself above the Constitution (Trump) should be president, and no one who asks someone else to him- or herself above the Constitution (Trump's request of Pence) should be president.  He seems to pat himself on the back for not having acceded to the request.  Although if he really meant what he said about people who put themselves above the Constitution, he'd join forces with Liz Cheney, instead of making a pathetic effort to ride uncle Donnie's coattails.

And Pence had a couple of ways of explaining why he was dropping out.  He did not explain why the trips to Iowa and New Hampshire attracted only a few audience members.  But he finally did the math, and took the dive he had to take, since his efforts weren't going anywhere.

Being a good Republican -- he calls himself a "Christian, a conservative, and a Republican" -- interestingly, he doesn't call himself an American -- (it's clear why he calls himself a Republican, entirely unclear why he calls himself a conservative, since the conservative agenda is meaningless, with a capital MEAN, and inconsistent, and totally irrelevant that his entirely personal religious beliefs are some form of Christian) -- he cited Abraham Lincoln.  Lincoln would, of course, not identify today's Republican Party with his own.  Pence quoted Lincoln as having said a president, or perhaps even any elected representative of the people (Lincoln was famously the "of the people, by the people, and for the people" guy), should "appeal to the better angels of our nature."

I've said it so many times that I'm sick of hearing myself say it, but here we go again: it is not possible to adhere to the Rep/con agenda without being a hypocrite, dishonest, or both.  And I feel very sure that Lincoln wasn't referring to hypocrisy and dishonesty as indicators of "the better angels of our nature."

As much as Pence or I know about Lincoln, we can, I feel confident, agree that the president who gave his life to get the slaves freed would not approve of the kind of anti-African-American hyper-gerrymandering that practically defines today's Reps/cons.  Lincoln was willing to engage in a horrible war to keep the Union together.  No one has a reason to assume he'd be cool with the current talk of secession we hear from some Reps/cons today.  "Honest Abe..." well, no, he wouldn't be a booster of today's Party.  Part of Lincoln's legacy was seeing to it that African-Americans had "40 acres and a mule."  Today's Reps/cons want the mule and the 40 acres back, and they want to make life so difficult for African-Americans that they'll have a shorter lifespan than Caucasians, be far more likely to get accused of something, and incarcerated for it, or get assassinated by the police, who turn out to be selective about whom they "protect and serve."

Mikey Pence (if his wife is "mother," what does that make him?) is one of those "Christian conservatives" who doesn't want abortion later than 15 weeks.  That's not consistent with American common law since the 18th C, and I don't have to repeat the joke about the guy who asks the gorgeous woman if she'd have sex with him for $1M, and then asks if she'd have sex with him for $20.  OK, Mikey, so it's established common law in this country that abortion is legal until about 18-21 weeks, Roe v Wade confirmed it, and you accept abortion.  So, what's your point?

Are you still riding the gripe train about immigration?  Are your forebears Native Americans?  Neither are mine.  Neither are hardly anyone's in this country.  We are built on immigration.  What kind of smoke and mirrors are you working here?  Oh, right, none any more, since you dropped out.  But your uncle Donnie's people are from Germany.  You know, as in some country in the world that isn't this one?  You all make this stuff up as you go along.  (Check with "Little Marco" Rubio and "Lyin' Ted" Cruz, and ask them how much trouble their parents were put to to enter and settle in this country.)

So, Pence, who was accomplishing nothing with his campaign, has ended it, no one else is accomplishing anything, and it thus far appears, unless voters are put off by a candidate who might be in jail, that uncle Donnie gets to try again against Biden.

Hey, I'm not a big fan of Biden's, either, but give me a real choice.

Ooh! 565!

In Maine yesterday, there was a mass shooting.  The 565th this year!  (Don't get hysterical.  That doesn't even average two a day.  Close, yeah, but still under two a day.)  16 people dead and 50 more injured in a restaurant/bowling alley.  The "primary person of interest" (caught on video) is a 40 year old Army reservist and firearms instructor with a "troubling mental health history."

I bet this is precisely what the Founding Fathers and early Congress had in mind when they passed the "Second Amendment."  (That whole "militia" thing was probably a smoke screen, because the government and the public really just wanted an excuse to see marginal individuals go to town on the general public.  They were way past people fighting lions in stadia, and somewhat past gladiators.)   It's no wonder no Congress since has wanted to finish repealing the "Second Amendment."  I mean, what's the problem?  We're all still having fun, right?  And some of us even live to talk about how much fun we're having.

It's Harder, and Apparently More Painful, Than Pulling Teeth

I moved to the Village in the middle of 2005.  The Village has its charms, and it's proud of some of them ("Tree City USA," "Bird Sanctuary").

Way back, Janey Anderson talks about a time when all the houses were white, except the slightly off-white ones owned by the adventurous homeowners.  At another time, Harvey and Vicki Bilt installed areca palms -- at their own initiative! -- in the median in front of their 121st St house, because they wanted more separation between their property in the Village and the southern border of CNM.  At some other time, Chester and Sandi Morris either installed a new irrigation system, or they extended the one they had on the south side of 119th St, so the system would cross under the street, and irrigate the median, too.  This was at their own initiative, and expense, like the Bilts' project, because they wanted the median in front of their house to look nice.

Before 2010, the Parks and Parkways Board, whose Chair was then Dan Keys, catalogued the medians.  Frankly, and in retrospect, it was never clear why they did that.  Dan says the P&P Board made a design plan for the medians, but Dan doesn't have a copy of the plan he says resulted, and no one else can find one.

We've had some other land development over the past 10-15 years, and they've included welcome signs, Roxy Ross' yearly MLK Jr Day of Service projects, which have been clean-ups of one small area or another, and a couple of Dan Keys' landscaping projects, which appear to be personal ambitions of Dan's, single-handedly designed, and executed with the labor of several or many of us.  The Village has acquired three outdoor sculptures, but only because a few or several Village residents personally bought them, and offered to give them to the Village for free.  We renovated the log cabin, and we constructed an Administration Building (with sizable grants), which was never landscaped as Dan Keys said he envisioned, or expected others to envision.  We cleaned up a mess that was the Public Works yard, which had fixtures like garbage trucks that didn't work, and the ground of which contains so much toxic waste that we couldn't sell it to a prospective home builder, and we put a Public Works building there instead.

And that's it.  Some of these improvements have been conceptualized and funded by Village residents, at their own initiatives (and expense), and some have been projects of the various Commissions.  We have not infrequently talked about stepping up Code enforcement, but we don't do it.

For the 18 years I've lived here, and seen our frankly ratty-looking medians, and watched people drive over them, because they can't be bothered to go to the end of the block and take a U-turn, I have suggested, and pleaded for, a median development scheme.  Our medians are completely unique, and we have sacrificed large enough driving lanes to have them.  But we refuse to make them the asset, and treasure, that they could be.  At one point years back, Dan Keys said he, and possibly P&P, if he allowed them to have any say about anything, would redesign two demonstration blocks of medians on 10th Ave.  That never happened.  And Dan has complained consistently about various trees planted by Village homeowners, like the arecas the Bilts planted, because they wanted something better than ratty grass, weeds, and raw dirt.  Dan doesn't want to improve the medians, and he doesn't want anyone else to improve them, either.

So, this is how we live.  And from all indications, it's how we're going to continue to live.  When I was on the Commission, I asked my colleagues to agree to task P&P simply with making a plan.  They didn't have to spend a dime.  The medians could all have been the same, or they could have been different, one from another.  Once we had a plan offered by our volunteer P&P Board, and everyone knew what that plan was, anyone on any block could donate personally to installing plantings that would fulfill the plan.  Maybe a friendly competition for the nicest median would have followed.  Nope.

We have about 1200 houses in the Village.  Mac Kennedy doesn't like some of them, because he likes an old Spanish, or MiMo, style.  Personally, I don't care, as long as any house looks nice, and is landscaped in a pleasing way.  Somehow, for whatever unimaginable reason, the Planning and Zoning Board allowed to be built a monstrosity on the south side of 117th St, and it has destroyed at least that block, because no one has privacy any more.

But still, no one wants improvement of our most unique asset.  Go figure.

I Sort of Know How They Do It. But I Think I Really Don't.

I've talked many times about South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center.  The county Commission has unnecessarily renamed it the Dennis C Moss Cultural Arts Center.  Dennis Moss was a county Commissioner who reportedly had something important to do with the idea of putting SMDCAC where it is, and he termed out, and even though the county has a rule that nothing can be named for a county employee until five years after that employee retires or stops working for the county, the Commission is allowed to make exceptions.  Moss, who is African American, was out of office for only two or three years, and working for someone else, when the county decided to honor him that way.  He wasn't the only recently former county employee who is African American for whom the county has made that exception.  I get it, but since Moss is relatively young, and still working, I would prefer the county Commission had stuck with its rules.  And besides, Moss didn't lobby for this venue for his own benefit.  Or pay for it with his own money.  (And he was paid to be on the Commission.)  SMDCAC is like the Sandrell Rivers Theater (NW 62nd St and 7th Ave) in that the county wanted to provide cultural venues where they hadn't existed before.  (It's become painfully clear why they didn't exist in those places: not many people/patrons go there.  These venues never get full, and are sometimes infuriatingly almost empty.  It's as if there weren't cultural venues because no one was interested in culture in those spots.  And by and large, they're still not.

SMDCAC is far from here.  It's at 10950 SW 211 St.  Traffic was terrible yesterday, and it took me two hours to get there.  But it is the best venue I know, or have even known, anywhere.  There are several reasons, including low ticket prices, unimaginably friendly staff, complete ease of getting, changing, or sometimes even cancelling, tickets (my usual companion decided to take a family trip this weekend, and my usual Sunday companion was going to have to work.  So I cancelled my second ticket for all three nights, and put the values of them on account.  But my Sunday companion can come after all, so I reinstated that ticket.), and free and abundant parking.  It's a beautiful building, too.  But the main reason that SMDCAC is the best venue in the world is their director, or impresario, Eric Fliss.  (I'm on first name terms with many SMDCAC personnel, including Eric, his wife, Roberta, the box office crew, including the amazing Dora, Rico, and Alex, Eric's next-in-line, Nicole, and various of the other staff, including Tom and Melody.)  Eric has an incomparable ear and eye for talent.  The performers he chooses (sometimes, goes to NY and other places to scout them out) are spectacular.  And he has local favorites, like Dimensions Dance Theater of Miami, who will knock your socks off, and who can perform there often.

I was at SMDCAC last night.  I'll be there tonight.  I'll be there tomorrow night.  I'm not going next weekend, because I might go to my nephew's wedding in Tallahassee, if I feel like driving up there and back.  But I'm at SMDCAC most weeks.  Sometimes, as you see, it's nights in a row.  On very rare occasion, I've been there for an afternoon show, and hung around and come back for an evening show.  They just don't miss.

So, last night was B2wins.  (Tonight is the Oscar Penas Quartet, and Sunday is tango.)  It was a little unclear to me, in part because Eric wasn't there, so I couldn't ask more about it, but one of the women from Culture Shock Miami told me B2wins was a choice of both Eric and Culture Shock.  Culture Shock, if things had to get any better, is an organization that provides $5 tickets for people aged 13 to 22, and another $5 ticket for their companion/parent, as if someone aged 18 to 22 needed to be chaperoned by their parent.

B2wins is short for Brazilian Twins.  They're not identical, and both brothers play violin (they explained that their father was a violin maker, but he couldn't play violin, so they took lessons starting at age 11, so they could give their father feedback, from a player's perspective, about the instruments he built).  One brother -- the more outspoken one -- also plays Brazilian ukulele and piano.  And the show was spectacular.  They're full of energy and enthusiasm, and they're excellent musicians.  You can find them on youtube, and if you look up 2cellos (two European guys) and Black Violin (two African American guys who grew up in Liberty City, and one plays violin, and the other plays viola), you'll see the similarity.  All of them totally engage the audience, and are high level talent.

The B2wins have a weird and interesting story, in that someone heard their CD or something, thought they were great, and invited them to move to Iowa to teach (and tour), which they did.  They both looked sort of black, and if they are, they might be about the only black people in Iowa.  And they're delightful, friendly, and unnecessarily grateful people.  They did two sets, then came out after the show to greet their new fans.  One of them gave me two items of "merch" because I told them how terrific they were, and how they had the same feel as 2cellos and Black Violin, and how I hoped they'd come back often.  They were like SMDCAC in that they treated their audience like the audience was doing them a favor by being there, instead of the other way around.

So, to get back to the title of this post, I sort of have a simplistic mechanical understanding of how Eric and Culture Shock Miami find one amazing show after another -- that's their business, and it's their talent -- but it's not easy to explain how they never miss.  Ever.

The very first show I attended at SMDCAC was Keb' Mo', who is a modern, but sort of old style, blues guitarist and singer.  I don't remember how I found out about Keb' Mo' (Kevin Moore), but years ago, he had two shows in south Florida.  One was in Stuart, and the other was at SMDCAC.  The latter was closer, and cheaper, and that's how I got introduced.  I've been deeply devoted ever since.  I go to most of their shows.

Thomas Massie (R-KY) Doesn't Want to "Bankrupt Our Country?"

A day or two ago, the Palestinians in Gaza, under the leadership of Hamas, attacked Israel.  Israel vigorously attacked back, and their leader claims it's his aim essentially to destroy the Gaza Strip.  There has been worldwide reaction to the Palestinians' attack, and some discussion as to what, if anything, the US should do about it.

Representative Massie holds a policy that he recognizes will seem "extreme" to some, and it is "no foreign aid."  He doesn't make clear if he means he objects to the $3.5B in aid this country already gives to Israel on a yearly basis, or if he's just referring to the extra $1B some legislators have proposed adding, under these new and sudden circumstances.

But Representative Massie makes his underlying intention clear: he argues that if some think his "no foreign aid" position is "extreme," "it's extreme to bankrupt our country and put future generations of Americans in hock to our creditors."  If it was that simple, I can't imagine that anyone would disagree with him.  But it's not that simple.

Israel was founded in 1948 as a reliable refuge for Jews, after the end of WWII.  That part of the world was not the only possible refuge considered, but it was the one that was chosen.  There were people living there -- Palestinians, like the "Native Americans" who lived here when the colonists wanted someplace other than England to live -- and those people were displaced to make room for a Jewish state.  And ever since then -- every year -- the United States has provided lots of the "foreign aid" to which Representative Massie says he objects.  For the moment, let's hold that thought.

Every year, always, the Pentagon requests a highly inflated budget.  Many, or perhaps most, years, they're given even more than they requested.  And I've read several articles about armaments (jet fighters, etc) that don't even work, even though we paid a highly inflated price for them.

At the same time, every recent Republican president has lowered taxes, almost exclusively to benefit the rich, who have no use for the money anyway, and the two most recent Democratic presidents have carefully avoided that "third rail."  The Pentagon's budget is our largest expense, and we agree, seemingly by presidents of both parties, not to forego funding the budget we lavish on the Pentagon.  Unfortunately, in a pattern that smells like massive hypocrisy, we then complain about the deficit.

So, we construct a fiscal structure that compromises Americans, people like Massie don't complain about it, but he then cries crocodile tears over the idea of bankrupting the country to address a problem that we took an important role in causing.  (It's true Hamas has never accepted the existence of Israel, which they should by now, but the Israelis have been relentless in attacking the Palestinians, and trying to obliterate them.  And the US has always provided unflinching and unquestioning help to them.)

But getting back to Massie's argument, and the title of this post, it is frankly screamingly disingenuous to unload (waste) massive amounts of money on the Pentagon, sometimes for warmaking equipment that doesn't work, and completely voluntarily run up an increasingly massive deficit about which everyone complains (by giving tax cuts to people who don't need them, at the expense of everyone else), but at the same time to whine about what Massie calls bankrupting our country.  All we would have to do is tax people who are merely selfish, and wouldn't be remotely bankrupted, or even miss the money, and this whole complaint evaporates.  And we could help ourselves further by stopping dumping meaningless and useless amounts of money on the Pentagon, which didn't ask for it, doesn't need it, and can't responsibly use it.  It is of note that the Pentagon has for years been unable to pass an audit.  They collect all this money, that people like Massie don't want to spend, and that the Pentagon mis-spends, and they can't even account for it.

So, if Massie doesn't want to bankrupt this country, I have some very easy suggestions for him.  And getting serious about real peace negotiations in the Middle East would most certainly be on the list.

"Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?" Or the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution?

For 50 years, abortion was legal everywhere in this country, because the SCOTUS ruled it was, in the "Roe v Wade" case.  But that ruling was dismantled recently by a different SCOTUS, several of whose members said, when asked directly, that "Roe" was law (and, by implication, untouchable according to stare decisis), but were given a new opportunity with the "Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization" case.  Setting aside what appears to be gross dishonesty and manipulativeness on the parts of these new Justices, when they were being considered for confirmation, and gave every appearance of promising not to overturn "Roe," we're left to wonder about their underlying theory in "Dobbs."

It is important to note that the SCOTUS is tasked with defending the Constitution of the US -- to be sure that any subsequent rulings are consistent with the Constitution, or as consistent as anyone could think the Constitution implied.  And the SCOTUS is required to honor past SCOTUS rulings, even if those rulings were made by earlier, or even much earlier SCOTUS Justices.  In the cases of the most recently confirmed SCOTUS members, they very clearly said, in response to having very clearly been asked, that they would honor the earlier ruling regarding abortion.  And if that promise seems like a sick joke, or essentially criminal now, that's the purpose of this discussion: how and why did they renege on their promise?

And let me say that I have not read the "Dobbs" decision.  I do not have access to it.  I have read as much as I can about it on Wikipedia, which calls itself "the free [online] encyclopedia."  There are some people who consider Wikipedia to be somehow left wing or left leaning.  I have never found that to be true.  I once wrote to the founder and publisher of a very distinctly left wing publication to ask why his publication was not listed on Wikipedia.  He said Wikipedia will only create a "page" for topics that have a certain kind and quality (and possibly extent) of bibliography, and his publication didn't.  Not enough people published enough about his publication to qualify it for a Wikipedia page.  If I assume his explanation was correct, then Wikipedia has that requirement, and it's not political.  Also, Wikipedia can be edited by its readers.  Those proposed edits are sent to whoever is the most relevant of the many Wikipedia editors and experts, to see if they agree with it.  On a number of occasions, I have proposed edits.  When the edits have been grammatical, they have been adopted.  When they have been what someone might think is my opinion, without added bibliography, they have been stricken.  So I feel confident relying on Wikipedia, which is the online and constantly changing version of the Encyclopedia Brittanica, on which I would also have felt confident relying.

So, getting back to the topic at hand -- abortion -- many or most people who oppose it say that "abortion is murder," which it certainly is, in a slightly distorted sense.  It is the ending of life of a thing that is living in a condition which it requires, and without which it could not live.  To give an even more extreme analogy, the Old Testament proscribes the "spilling of seed," as if male masturbation was the same as murder, because had the "seed" been introduced to an egg from a female, it might have become a fetus.  Likewise, women who consider themselves Jewish, and are on the more observant side, cannot touch anyone for two weeks after their menstrual period, and until they undergo a cleansing procedure, because an unfertilized egg that is expelled in a menstrual period is considered to be the same as a death, and anyone who comes into contact with a dead person cannot touch a living person, until...  According to people who believe in those things.  And if you don't believe in those things, and don't consider that kind of stricture necessary or appropriate, hold that thought.

In any event, many of the people who consider and call themselves "pro-life" are not "pro-life" at all.  We've had this discussion before, and these people do not generally (except for some of the Catholics) lift a finger to protest capital punishment, nor do they agitate against the profusion of privately held guns in this country, even though the one and only purpose of the former is to take a life, with no benefit or compensation to anyone else, and a strikingly common consequence of the latter is the death of someone, or a collection of people, some or all of whom are commonly innocent of any crime, and in the absence of "due process," as guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.

So, what, then, was "Dobbs" about?  The first part of the title of this post was a wish for "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."  But that phrase is not part of the US Constitution.  It's part of the Declaration of Independence.  The "Life" part of that quote didn't motivate the SCOTUS' decision in "Dobbs."  And even if the SCOTUS told itself that the Declaration of Independence was somehow related to the Constitution, this SCOTUS, and many, most or all of the former ones, have on occasion refused even to consider death penalty cases from various of the states.  If they cared about Life, or were "pro-life," they'd hear them all, and disqualify all of the death penalties.

What, then, was the "Dobbs" decision about?  The easy answer is "nothing."  But it's worthy of more examination than that.  One possible theory is that "Dobbs" was about the "pro-life" scam.  But since the "pro-life" crew aren't really "pro-life," then it wasn't really about that.  A second possibility is that "Dobbs" was about supposedly religious people imposing their personal religious preferences on all Americans, including Americans who either don't share those religious preferences, or might in theory share some of them, but they don't interpret them that way.  This, too, is entirely personal.  But "Dobbs" can't be about that, because "Dobbs" was a SCOTUS ruling and the SCOTUS is committed to adhering to the US Constitution, the First Amendment of which says the "state" (the Union) cannot impose a religion, or perhaps religion (freedom of religion includes freedom from religion).

We have to look more deeply.  According to Wikipedia, "the case concerned the constitutionality of a Mississippi law that banned most abortion operations after the first 15 weeks of pregnancy.  The Mississippi law was based on a model by a Christian organization...with the specific intent to provoke a legal battle that would reach the Supreme Court and result in the overturning of 'Roe.'"  So, this leaves us with a few problems.  If the impetus behind the action was religious tyranny, then any normal SCOTUS would have ruled against it simply on that basis, citing the First Amendment.  A second problem, which we have discussed before, is that allowing abortion until 15 weeks of pregnancy is allowing abortion.  And to complicate matters, the 2018 Mississippi Gestational Age Act permitted abortion until 15 weeks, unless there was a medical emergency or severe fetal anomaly, but not in cases of rape or incest.  This kind of theorizing is entirely incoherent, inconsistent, and arbitrary, and still means that abortion is legal.  So Dobbs had no rational foundation.  That's not to mention that more than 93% of abortions occur by 15 weeks, so Dobbs' argument doesn't accomplish whatever Dobbs wanted to accomplish.  It doesn't accomplish anything, unless it's intended to prevent the less than 6% more abortions that occur by 20 weeks.  Anti-abortion crusaders, by the way, like to raise the level of histrionics by claiming that without limitations, there are abortions more or less at term.  This is an invention.

An interesting point made on the Wikipedia page was that "From the American revolution to the mid-19th C, abortion was legal until quickening in every state under the common law, and not an issue of significant controversy."  Those who think of themselves as "originalists" can therefore be reassured that there was no "significant" original argument against or restriction of abortion.  Quickening is defined as the time that a fetus' movement can be felt by the mother, which was considered a sign of "personhood," and which variously occurs between 18 and 20 weeks of gestation.  So "Dobbs is more restrictive than universal common law throughout this country, and it applies to fetuses that are not defined as people.  Dobbs' argument gets thinner and thinner.  And the SCOTUS' agreement with it has essentially no foundation.

It's essential to note that people who want abortions are pregnant, and didn't want to be.  They took whatever precautions they thought would be effective to prevent it.  There is no law saying that fertile people must produce offspring, and as many as possible.  I give an abbreviated "sex talk" to many of my patients and couples.  I tell them that there are three good outcomes of sex.  The first is pregnancy, but no one wants that most of the time.  People work against it, otherwise all couples would have dozens of children.  (The other two good things that come from sex are pleasing the man, which is more or less comically and pathetically easy to do, and pleasing the woman, which is the art, the beauty, and really the main purpose of sex.  Except for those extremely rare times when the couple wants pregnancy, in which case pregnancy and pleasing the man, without which pregnancy doesn't occur, are the most important.  But still, no one wants pregnancy almost ever, and men are still comically and pathetically easy to please.)

So, in reality, "Dobbs" wasn't about anything, and didn't accomplish anything.  (Except it led other states and jurisdictions to limit abortion to times like six weeks, when many women don't even know they're pregnant, or to never.  But this kind of limitation is irrational and inconsistent with the history of this country.)  It should really not have been challenged, unless anyone in Mississippi cared about girls or women who got pregnant from rape or incest.  At least some of them don't appear to have.  Unless the omission of these victims was Dobbs' way of getting this to the SCOTUS, which is said to have been his aim.

But we do leave out two issues.  One is the "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" theme.  Abortion deprives a fetus that is not considered to be a person of Life, such as it is.  Imposed parenthood for people who don't want children, perhaps yet, and may not be in a situation, or age, to rear them deprives those people of Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.  If the reason not to toss a coin is personal religious devotion of people who are not the parents of this early pregnancy, then the US Constitution says this imposition cannot be applied.

The other issue is the 14th Amendment, and its guarantee of due process.  The temptation for some is to concern themselves with the due process that is owed to the early fetus that is not yet a person, and which it had always been legal in this country to abort.  That certainly seems to be a question that answers itself.