Hit bottom yet?

Dr. Amy Acton, the Democratic candidate who is running for the governorship of Ohio against Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, is 60 years old.

Acton was removed from her birth mother, Donna Arthur, by court order because of an abusive environment when she was 12 years old. That was 48 years ago. Nearly five decades. Arthur hasn't spoken to Acton since then.

Now, in a particularly revolting political moment, Ramaswamy has repeatedly circulated an online campaign ad featuring Arthur criticizing her daughter as both "a liar" and suffering from mental health issues. Arthur's ad also questions Acton's claim that her daughter lived in a tent as a child as a result of homelessness.

What the ad doesn't address is the fact that Arthur's husband at the time, Cledith Arthur, was indicted by a grand jury and charged with the rape and abuse of Acton and her brother, Phil Stearns, in 1978. I repeat – when she was 12. That's pedophilia as well as sexual assault. Sound familiar these days?

The stepfather skipped the state of Ohio, ran off to Pennsylvania with his wife, and never appeared in court. Donna Arthur, apparently chose living with her abusive child-raping husband than to support her own blood daughter.

Court records and news reports from 1978 support Acton's account of her childhood experience. FactCheck.org also found records that connect Cledith to the campground where Acton said she lived in a tent. So there's that.

In light of this, a desperate Ramaswamy, who trails Acton in recent polling, refuses to pull the ad and has doubled down on his assertion that Acton is a lying liar.

Ramaswamy even enlisted the support of convicted felon president Donald Trump – now there's a character witness for you – who told Ramaswamy to continue to run the ad because it was a "very powerful" ad and that it hit political paydirt.

This is coming from the guy who is mentioned thousands of times in the Epstein files. You remember the Epstein files, right? The files that were ordered to be released – totally unredacted – by a bipartisan act of Congress. It was signed into law by Trump himself.

And yet, here we are, sifting through the heavily redacted files that have been released while still waiting for more than a million remaining files – maybe even more – that haven't been released. What's the hold up? Or maybe we need to ask: What's the cover up?

Ramaswamy's attack ad on Acton is pretty vile stuff and it brings me to wonder where the hell this country's moral compass is located. In one of Trump's recent midterm campaign rallies, he backed Ramaswamy's view. The crowd behind him cheers idiotically. Wait, what? Cheering a rapist? An abuser of children?

Ramaswamy has Trump's support. He also has the support of vice president J.D. Vance. So the top two leaders of the Republican Party are backing the story of a woman who has turned her souless heart from the child who was raped and abused by her justice-skipping husband. And GOP followers are cheering this?

Where is that moral compass again? 

Oh, that's right. It's still falling. It still hasn't hit bottom. 

 

Early voted

It seems as though Kim and I had been waiting impatiently for the opportunity to vote early in this year's midterm elections.

More precisely, waiting forever. The waiting felt interminable, in the same way living in the current Trump administration feels interminable.

So Friday, after Kim got off from work, we made a beeline to the Davidson County Board of Elections to exercise our constitutionally guaranteed right to vote. Somewhat surprisingly, there was not the usual crowd of poll watchers, down-ballot candidates or party partisans in the parking lot to wade through.

But there was at least one. "Would you like a brochure to review the Republican candidates?" she asked. "No!" exclaimed the usually soft-spoken Kim in her loud, stop-annoying-me voice as we quick-stepped our way to the polls. After a moment or two passed, Kim turned to me. "You know what I should have said? I should have told her 'Hell, no!'" She snickered.

Kim's gentle Southern accent, which has captivated me for decades, made it sound more like "Hail, no!" I snickered, too.

When we got inside the door we were greeted by poll workers who reminded us that we needed to have our photo ID available. Kim already had her driver's license in hand. I pulled my wallet out of my pocket, flipped the flap that covers the license window in my wallet and ... my license wasn't there.

Wha...??? Where's my license? It's always there. What happened to it?

Panic set in. How can I vote? I was more concerned about not being able to vote than I was about going through the potential bureaucracy of replacing my license.

Kim was already in line. I sat off to the side, pulling every card out from every conceivable pocket in my wallet. Sweat was forming. My fingers were shaking. Where the hail is my license? It's got my Real ID on it. Without Real ID, I'm nobody. Apparently.

Kim was now checking in to vote. I gave my wallet one last search. And behold. There, behind the plastic window that's usually reserved for my license, there is another slip-in pocket that serves as a card holder, but not for display. Somehow, that's where my license was. I got in line.

And I voted. I voted against illegal wars. I voted against unilaterally raising tariffs. I voted against rogue law enforcement roaming our streets and murdering our citizens. I voted against rising inflation. I voted against rising prices. I voted against the chaos that has swallowed this nation. I voted against a convicted felon president having free reign to employ his twisted vision of American government with the support of a Republican controlled Congress. I voted against presidential corruption. I voted against tax breaks for the very rich.

I don't know how loud my voice is, but I felt good about voting. I always do. I never feel more American than at this moment.

On the way home, we tried to figure out how my driver's license got to where it ended up. Kim remembered that there was a routine license check on a side road in town about a month ago. I had to take my license out of my wallet, and when I put it back, I unknowingly slipped it back in the pocket behind the display window. Nobody could see it.

Oh, well. It was worth the panic. It all worked out.

I voted. Now it's your turn. 

 

 

The jab ... and the jab

Back in late September, Kim and I were wondering when the best time would be to go get our flu shots this year. We knew the time was approaching.

We haven't missed our annual shot in more than 40 years and we weren't about to miss it this year, either.

Then, a week or so ago, a news item popped up indicating that this year's flu strain was expected to be particularly virulent, and the best time to go for the vaccine would be ... right now, if not sooner. So Kim went ahead and lined up appointments for both of us at Lexington Family Physicians for this past Thursday.

Oh, and by the way, let's get the Covid shot, too.

So we did. Flu shot in the right arm, Covid jab in the left.

 While I was getting my injections Thursday, the first thing I thought of was all the antivaxxers who are so insistent on not protecting themselves or (more thoughtlessly) the herd from catching the flu or Covid.

Every once in a while, an antivaxxer will post some nonsense about how well the antiparasitic Ivermectin works and that the Covid-19 vaccine, by contrast, has caused the death of millions.

A simple Internet search quickly debunks many of those claims:

• Since the Covid-19 vaccine rollout began in 2020, more than 13.5 billion vaccine doses have been administered worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). That covers 70.5 percent of the world's population (8.5 billion) who have received at least one dose. If you noticed that more doses have been administered than there are people, remember the initial vaccinations were a multiple step process.

• Perhaps the more pertinent question would be how many lives have been saved by the Covid-19 vaccine? According to The Lancet Infectious Diseases hosted by the National Institute of Health (NIH), Covid-19 vaccines saved an estimated 14.4 million to 19.8 million lives from December 2020 to December 2021 – or a 63 percent reduction in total potential deaths.

In the United States, the Commonwealth Fund writes that independent modeling indicates over three million lives have been saved and tens of millions more have avoided hospitalization.

Just keep in mind that Covid-19 is a moving target and that the vaccination is aiming at a constantly changing virus, and thus requires unending vigilance and research. Consequently, the Covid-19 vaccine formula is updated every year to match the virus variants, much in the same way the flu vaccine is prepared.

• One of the antivaxxer assertions that tickled me claims that thousands of virologists supposedly have questioned the effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccine, but according to WHO, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA), just the opposite is true: Covid-19 vaccines are safe, effective and have saved millions of lives. Those suggesting otherwise are either deliberately lying or otherwise reporting false or conspiracy-based misinformation to support a political agenda. Laugh at them.

I've always been worried about influenza. Years ago, when I first learned of the great Spanish influenza outbreak in 1918, I was shocked to learn that an estimated 50 million to 100 million people died in that pandemic worldwide.

The virus claimed 675,000 American lives, more than the combined American combat casualties of World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

Up until I reached my late 30s, I thought the flu was pretty much just a bad head cold. Silly me. But for nearly as long as Kim and I have been married, we've gotten our flu shots. And as far as I can remember, we've never gotten the flu.

I've never quite understood why some people avoid getting flu and Covid shots, especially when the evidence is clear that the vaccinations actually protect the community. I mean, it's my understanding that even if you don't get the shot and you don't display any flu symptoms, you can still carry and transmit the virus with a simple sneeze or touch. Why would you do that? It seems to me the object here isn't only to keep yourself safe, but also your friends, family, neighbors and colleagues as well.

I have this picture in my head of a young child crying real tears as she is being administered the flu shot. For some reason, I think this is a lasting image that many people carry into adulthood. I bet deep down folks opposed to vaccines just don't want to feel the needle's sting again. It's the only thing that even remotely make sense to me.

These shots didn't hurt. 

C'mon. Get your shots.