47 Comments

Roy, the only thing you missed is stripping women of the right to vote, since we favor Democratic candidates and the socialist welfare state. And I’m sure some conservative think tank is working on proposed legislation to rescind the franchise right now.

Women have been mocked by the Right for years because of all the feminist allusions to The Handmaid’s Tale. Apparently conservatives weren’t mad about it because they were insulted, but because now they’ve got the SCOTUS they wanted, we were spoiling their big reveal.

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I think The Availability to Childbearing Enforcement Act would be clearly unconstitutional. The rest is all good.

I could swear a couple of these bills were in the Texas GOP platform back when they were banning the teaching of critical thinking skills. But it's Texas, so they might not have been extreme enough.

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Nothing is necessarily unconstitutional with the SCOTUS they've packed.

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Need to slot the "Kirche Kuche Kinder Act" between the "Availability to Childbearing Enforcement Act" and the "True Purpose Act".

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And of course, it would be called the "KKK Act" for short.

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Reading about this shit always makes me grit my teeth in rage, so I can't even imagine how much it must upset actual women.

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Well, I'm an actual woman and my head is about to explode, so ....

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"Instead of having the government enforce the law, the bill turns the reins over to private citizens — who are newly empowered to sue abortion providers or anyone who helps someone get an abortion after a fetal heartbeat has been detected."

Ah, the vigilante approach returns to Texas.

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This is the scary part of this law

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Indeed, though I don’t understand how the legislature can just declare that everyone and his dog has standing to bring a lawsuit even when they are wholly unconnected with the parties involved. Then again our courts are largely an obscene perversion of justice that only exists to protect property and privilege, so I can see them allowing it.

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This is correct: one needs to have standing to file a tort. Otherwise the government has to do it.

All this is designed to do is encourage chuds to murder doctors & burn down health clinics.

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Check out "Private Attorney General Acts". It isn't a new concept, but it was used for mostly progressive causes up till now.

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What, no reward?

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Applause and tears, my only possible reaction.

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This all sucks -- but real talk, the question of abortion is mostly just fundraising on both sides. If liberals wanted reproductive HC to be safe, they'd do something about it or at least act like the question doesn't terrify them. If the GOP really wanted it banned, they'd have done so in all the millions of chances they've had while in sole control of the Federal gvmt since 1972.

The politics of theater that exists in this country depends on a State of Anxiety & Fear. MSNBC is just as much a part of that as FOX...

PS) Just because I say its "fundraising" doesn't mean these efforts are not frightening or that actual people who can get pregnant, esp. the poor & marginalized, will not suffer & possibly die because of these efforts.

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I've had fundamentalist Christians explain to me that the only purpose of sex is to create children and that anything else is against the will of God. These people would be delighted to see Griswold overturned.

As for whether it's all just fundraising ploys on both sides, no. Abortion drives plenty of fundraising on the Right, and I'd be astonished if the Roberts Court does not strike down Roe. On the left, abortion barely registers as part of Democrats' fundraising. And with good reason: The Supreme Court doesn't register as an issue on the Left.

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"The Supreme Court doesn't register as an issue on the Left." Fortunately, this has started to change. I just hope it's not too late.

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Hear, hear. I've been banging this drum for years and I too fear we now may be in too little, too late territory.

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I was trying to get elected officials to deal with gerrymandering and redistricting almost two decades ago, but it was either crickets or “chill out; I got this” until right before an election. Then came the desperate fundraising letters and emails drenched in flop sweat.

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You must have Robert Menendez as a Senator too. Or Donald Norcross...

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At the time I had Johnson and Herseth-Sandlin, two Ds, though the bigger issue was state-level redistricting, which is an obscene gerrymander. Now the Repugs have a supermajority in both houses, and the electorate is so polarized they see “neutral redistricting” as a partisan issue. The opportunity has passed. Oopsie! Oh well. I’m sure everything will sort itself out. They got this!

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The Dems are not the Left, even in Rish Limbaugh's fever dreams: Center leaning a bit left at best.

Fundies will be fundies & until pols start acting like they are a rapidly dwindling minority in this country, we'll be plagued by them. The GOP has always treated them like useful idiots (again, fundraising) -- but there does seem to be a frightening turn in the Q/Tr*mp bullshittery in the past 6 years, so it's anybody's game.

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The Republicans have always used them as useful idiots is something I've heard for decades, but from the beginning they chipped away at basic rights for them and they kept winning these small victories and coming back next year to win a another small victory and now here we are.

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True enough: but part of their surge in apparent power is lack of any reasonable opposition: Dems just cower before patriotism & God so is it any wonder the fundies think they have ther shot at Gilead?

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I get what you’re saying but I think, as in many other areas, we’ve gone past the “politics of theater” and into that of the concentration camp.

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Oh no doubt -- they are certainly projecting what they would do if given extra-Constitutional control. This is part of the reason I'm so frustrated with the Dems: they're still playing stickball as if very little is at stake.

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Today's Republicans aren't your father's Republicans. Some are, but many grew up in the fetid evangelical swamps and truly want to punish women

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Which is why I said women will get hurt by these attempts.

Evangelicals have always wanted to punsh women: in fact, that's pretty much how patriarchy started.

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Evangelicals in our American mashup of church and state. The ELCA has the old school (Greek root?) use of Evangelical in its name, and its friendly to women in the clergy and gay folk. Our synod (region) voted for a woman as bishop twice (2 6-year terms).

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Goddam, this piece is why we pay the obscene overcharges to be here: For awful, awful events to be made into something genuinely funny.

That said, I'm already having the hangover, so to speak, of realizing that these first two years of Old Joe's administration are but an interregnum, the briefest of breaks before the Republicans, supported by the establishment press and venal Dems, get moving again on their agenda to turn this nation into a failed state, a shithole like the world has never seen.

But damn, for a couple of moments at least I was amused.

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Better make sure that passport is up to date.

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It is! Ready to run when this show gets shut down in 2024 by the Republican majority in Congress.

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For the past several years now I have been anticipating that, at some point on the way to the (second) end of the Union, we will see the Fugitive Fetus Act (h/t to whoever made this title up), which will make it a crime to go out of state to get an abortion. State versions welcome, of course, but perhaps more an item for the next Republican Congress to take up. And then it can be 1850 all over again.

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You should make this one public!

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Done!

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matt gaetz will be the head of the 'old enough to go to the store, old enough to get bred' council.

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'Forward! into the Past!!!'

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Forward is always relative to which way one is facing

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More like "froward"

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Not to be considered - cash bonuses for women who give birth to a living child.

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What do you think welfare is, you commie pinko

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Whites only

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Lol. Sort of.

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Please god do not let this be one of the Pictures of Lilly.

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luv ur work.

just wanted to point out...

"they may be required to adopt Mexican babies ... to retain their sexual access permissions"

i very briefly misread this as a very different, and much darker, joke about one of those things you just don't joke about.

it was clear enough that this wasn't what you intended, but... just putting it out there (not least because that's totally the type of thing that right-wing hacks would pull out and try to tar you with).

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