The Benedict murder is sickening. Would that we could prosecute every politician/influencer/grifter who is making bank on LBGTQ+ hate, not just the fucked up kids they helped create.
Oh, of fucking course. Would the NYT run an article or column on someone like that? But EVEN THE LIBERAL 🤪 NYT does that with scumbags who are Just Asking Questions about whether certain people should exist. And that's only the diluted stuff - Fox News and the NY Pisst have the good shit, uncut, straight into your veins.
I feel like the very first time you see that a Twitter post from you causes someone to receive death threats, that should be the moment for a hard conversation with yourself about "What the hell am I doing with my life?" For Chaya Raichik, it's Tuesday.
Sometimes I feel like the wild-eyed guy in the meme who is pointing to a wall of clippings with red string forming a spider web connecting them. But it really is all connected, and they aren’t being subtle. Enforced gender roles, anti-LGBT+ hate, attacks on reproductive rights. It’s all a big tangle of the same theocratic, pro-capitalist, pro-patriarchy bullshit. And since its primary goal is to produce more white babies, it’s racist as well.
Speaking as a non-person of the human incubator variety, this is absolutely where the “pro-life” movement was always headed: the fetus is a person, the woman is not. She is either a murderous slut or a mother-to-be depending on whether the pregnancy is wanted or not, but never, ever a person.
I’ll add that these abortion restrictions are deeply intertwined with the Great Replacement theory. They want more white babies. They want women at home. They want happy little patriarchs -- whose domestic, emotional, and sexual needs are being adequately addressed – cheerfully marching into the boss’s factories every day.
Roadblocks will soon be set up at every road and trail the crosses the Alabama state line. Morality Police will man the roadblocks. No female of child-bearing age will be allowed to leave the state. After all, she might be leaving to go get an abortion. Or she might be leaving to get IVF, which is also illegal now. So, can't let 'em leave cause they might be trying to get pregnant or unpregnant.
Although what Valenti points out and Roy highlights about the impact this ruling has on reproductive care vis a vis abortion, it is also a textbook case of conservative overreach.
People who don't think too deeply about connecting the dots to abortion, and even people who disapprove of abortion more generally, are likely to see this as overreach. About 75% of people know someone -- in their family, or at work, or a friend's daughter -- who has been able to have a baby through reproductive technologies. So outside Alabama and perhaps even within it, this ruling will be unpopular. Of course, whether or not mere unpopularity with at least 75% of citizens matters or not remains to be seen. I guess we'll find out in November.
It's all part of the same thing – abortion, IVF, birth control -- but people don’t want to connect the dots because it’s too monstrous. And needless to say the journalistic dereliction of duty, their treatment of every part of the pattern as a discrete, chin-stroking phenomenon unique to itself, isn’t helping.
They're already (very quietly, only among themselves) talking about reviving the Comstock law that prohibited "obscene matter" through the mail, including instructions and/or materials for contraception. It's still TECHNICALLY law, it's never been rescinded, and I'm sure they're thinking about how to apply it to modern technology.
Saw that yesterday and I'm sure anyone who mentions it in the media will get the guppy face from the Right and the "why, that's ABSURD!" bullshit - like they did last year with Roe.
(You know, just thinking about how much I'm processing about all this... I've always wanted to write a book, but always told myself I had nothing to write ABOUT. If I could get my shit together, maybe...?)
P.S. you'll notice Tubby started to blab about this and they were quick to shut him up. Not quite time yet, which is why Tuck-tuck is making Stern Daddy analogies and Tubby's dictator comments with "aw, that scamp, he says the FUNNIEST THINGS!"
Note the Alabama madness isn't even fetal personhood: it’s Fertilized Ovum personhood, or Blastocyst personhood.
And you dang Incubator American need to start taking your responsibility seriously, especially the melanin deficient ones, and start incubating, stat, if Alabama knows whuts good fer ya…
I was born in Bridgeport AL (NE Corner, near Chattanooga TN) when Dad worked for TVA, and am pleased he came back to NC to run the dairy farm..
Hope it works! I have been repeatedly horrified by people I know who have reasoned "Well, this thing they want to ban actually saved me -- so they wouldn't actually ban it in *that* case." Leopard, meet face.
My sister worked at a federal office that enabled her to buy a house and raise kids and which a GOP candidate vowed to dissolve. Our parents voted for him. "It's just a campaign promise!"
My brother's health crisis did not financially devastate him only because of Obamacare -- he showed our parents the bills. But they remained committed to seeing the ACA undone. "I'm sure if that handout didn't exist, you would have found a way [to cough up half a million dollars]. God wouldn't let you fail."
That old mix of solipsism, cynicism, and magic-- just as important to GOP success as racism!
"mix of solipsism, cynicism, and magic" very well put. Having faith god will look out for the "good" people, allowing the leopards to lightly nibble their own faces, and their gleeful, unacknowledged blood lust to have the faces of those they oppose be devoured -- it's the Republican Way!
Another thing I'm gonna be repeating - I never, FUCKING NEVER, want to hear anyone say "but why didn't the Germans just resist Hitler?". Motherfuckers, they WEREN'T AFFECTED. THEY got to live their lives and have their businesses and raise their sprogs and it was only the Bad People who the Gestapo came for, the disruptive ones, the societal menaces. (Until the War, of course, but details.) It's really easy to accept fascism when you're not the target. (Until, of course, the occupation forces lead you past the camps and the piles of corpses and yell at you in a language you don't understand about why you didn't DO something. Again, details.)
I guess maybe I'm just yelling for nothing. After all, I half expected Dubya to attack Iran. And I'm pissed about work and maybe I'm just channeling that. But I'd rather be wrong and apologize than be right.
I don't think Americans know much of anything about how fascism in practice was a joint endeavor among the regime, other established interests/powers, disgruntled reactionary citizens, and complicitors abroad. These Americans, I'm afraid, will go along just as soon as someone explains what's in it for them.
Well, I think it helps me understand their powerful need for religion. Makes it easier to consign others to hell-on-earth while also thinking you're a nice person.
I don't know about roadblocks. Fear is generally enough. They don't care about any particular fetus (whatever they might say) so much as the punishment and the example made. Don't care about ANY, except in the abstract.
There will also be selective enforcement. Say the governor's daughter wants an out-of-state abortion or IVF. It's impractical to coordinate with the airport and border goons?
... I dunno. Just spitballing about a police state with bigger aspirations than its budget (hello, Alabama - especially as your economy worsens for related reasons).
If they kill the state universities and alienate lotsa big corps, then what? One promising avenue - asset forfeiture. We catch you, we get your stuff, via the courts.
To be absolutely clear, I am appalled. Not actually happy to game it all out.
Hey, don't forget the NAZIS. Although I guess there wouldn't be many of them still around, unless Dr. Megele's experiments yielded some useful life-prolonging discovery?
Also, "Most engineers are glibertarians..." My God is this true, 1000X.
And no need to wonder, their response will depend 100% on whether they themselves need IVF. If they do, it's a terrible attack on our rights by the state, more proof the goddamn government can't be trusted, vote Republican but HARDER.
OTOH if they don't need IVF, then mumble mumble something about a contract the woman signed with the IVF company, contracts are sacred, only Republicans can be trusted to uphold the sanctity of contracts, vote Republican but HARDER.
I can't remember the name of the Democratic Senator from Alabama that got that NASA rocket facility for his state, but Apollo-era NASA was lousy with such pork-barreling. Sure, we launch the astronauts from Florida, but then we make the handoff to mission control in Houston because...
God designs (so to speak) all sorts of biological things. It's not surprising that human beings are complicated in spite of being prevalently binary and cis-gender. It's only surprising because we haven't much heard otherwise.
Stephen Jay Gould once wrote an essay about the Ichneumon wasp, and how it was a great cause of consternation for religious folk back in the late 19th century. How could something so horrible possibly be a creation of GOD? These are some profoundly stupid people.
For my money, all the philosophical arguments for a godless universe pale against my emotions - a type of cosmic horror. So much to witness. The world is like a Necronomicon, drivin' me nuts. Who needs Cthulhu?
" Marge, I saw this billboard on the way home and it's really got me thinking. We should join that big church on the edge of town and spend our spare time butting into other people's business"
Just one of the many putative "mental processes" commonly observed on what used to be the far rightward fringes, now dba the mainstream Republican Party. You'd have to be one of those stretchy superheroes to reach across the aisle at this point.
I've always just assumed that was their p.r. cover story: "see, we want to protect ALL babies." When I volunteered with PP in NYC many, many moons ago, the staff considered it a relief to work in the clinics in majority Latino/Black neighborhoods because the protesters -- almost exclusively white -- simply didn't show up.
I think the clinic protesters are the same type of white people who are genuinely afraid they'd get robbed or even killed if they went to a major city. The bolder ones probably "conceal carry," assuming they can travel by ground.
Oh sure, undoubtedly that's a huge part of it. But it doesn't speak well of their "christianity" that they allow their racism to get in the way of the mandate from baby Jesus to scream at women seeking reproductive health care.
I could easily see them making a racism-exception for Black infants, because all infants are adorable, and it's not til they're 5 or 6 that you got to call the cops and put 'em in handcuffs for back-sassin' a White teacher.
The second they do something you don't like, they qualify as an adult under the law. State pen for a 6 year old? Sure, for a dusky one. The lighter kind just need some therapy and meds.
I have seen three or four protestors on the sidewalk in front of the Planned Parenthood center across the street ftom the vet. There's what looks to be a crisis pregancy center just up the street. Although, this IS a heavily Catholic aeea, so that might skew the curve.
Funny how they have determined zygotes and corporations are fully "people", but the evidence for them is still sketchy on the personhood of women or Blacks or migrants.
They want The Hierarchy - parents over children, husband over wife, government over populace, God over all. I keep harping on this but I think it's the plan. They can't assign us to Brave New World type castes - yet - but there's a holy, natural, destined slot for everyone in their nice ordered world to fit in, and they'll call the wrath of Heaven down on you if you try to wiggle out of it.
The idea that Valenti has to deal this hate, insanity, hateful insanity, sociopathy and, yes, I can keep this up for awhile, on a regular basis upsets me no end.
As for Hogan, my recollection is that his claim to fame besides the obvious is that his response to Covid wasn’t literally deadly. Telling people that it was fine to spread and die from the ‘Rona was the Trumpism response. (Just had a flash of the bored little boy look on fPOTUS’ face when he wasn’t speaking during his Covid shows.)
Which is to say that elite media support notwithstanding, Hogan’s not an exception to my claim that every Republican is unfit for office.
As for Alabama, well, it’s Alabama, the whites of whom, with insufficient exceptions to matter, have only harmed the nation. (As for the good whites in Alabama,I feel for them, sure, but story of Lot.)
I referenced Lot which is to say there have to be exceptions to my “rule” but, Sodom, not enough to matter. And of course I was also referencing good for the nation and on that scale… bupkis.
“Unborn children are ‘children’…without exception based on developmental stage, physical location, or any other ancillary characteristics.”
It is a known and fairly common occurrence for an egg to be fertilized but fail to implant and it then gets flushed out with the normal menstrual cycle. Chances are pretty good most women have had this happen.
Under the AL Supremes theory, ALL women are guilty of homicide in one form or another. Had a miscarriage? You're a murderer. Had an egg fail to implant? You're a murderer. Doesn't matter that you had no way of knowing you had a first-week miscarriage or an egg that failed to implant. You killed a child!!!
So if this doctrine is taken to heart, we have no choice but to place all women of child-bearing age under arrest. They are, after all, either murderers or soon-to-be killers. Every one of them.
I always think the believers should blame God for all these millions of murders. The theory of embryonic personhood implies its own theology. He slaughters these children, mostly before their mothers know they even exist, but the omniscient one knows, by definition; he's present at every sex act, watching the little sperm cells on their marathon race up to the fallopian tubes and cheering on his favorites, and whenever one of them wins he makes a decision about the newly created child, condemning ten or twenty percent of them to death for his own mysterious reasons. This is why humans must not interfere: the judgment has already been made.
It was bad enough when current events started mirroring decades old Firesign material, but when one of our two major political parties can be summed up by two Python bits (Every Sperm and the Very Silly Party) Big Trouble has taken a quantum leap forward.
This assumes they're capable of grasping, let alone formulating, a coherent theology. Anything that enforces the natural order is the will of God, everything else may be ignored as irrelevant to God's will. That's as far as they get, and as far as they want to get.
Well I imagine conservatives would consider it a minor, so you can't sue it but under many state laws you can now send it to work in a manufacturing job.
This time I really think they've gone too far. I think they would give anything for a do over on Dodd.
Some piss take from some fossilized legacy media this week was talking about
How Democrats were just worn out and lacked the will to fight this time around. They're confused, I think, because we don't walk around in a maniacal froth all the time like the Trump assholes. The Dems I know, especially the women, are nursing a cold hard fury and they can't wait to exercise the franchise.
Would that the franchise included punching Ezra Klein in the nuts.
"How Democrats were just worn out and lacked the will to fight this time around. They're confused, I think, because we don't walk around in a maniacal froth all the time like the Trump assholes."
That Ezra Klein piece was like 2 a.m. dorm room noodling, not a practical plan on any level. While reading it I kept thinking of Jeff Goldblum’s line in Jurassic Park: “so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
Please tell me it was in the NY Times, because I cancelled my subscription about a year ago and I always like hearing confirmation that I'm right about something. OTOH, if it was in the WaPo, then I was right TWO years ago.
The never-Trump wing would love a do-over on Dobbs, but they are irrelevant to politics at the moment. Republicans are going to keep reaching until their knuckles are rapped with an architect's ruler, the triangular one maid of aluminum. A nun in grade school used one, it focuses the mind wonderfully.
Let me just observe that the photo you chose for today is hilarious. "Let's show we're bros through our body language, but don't let your titties get close to mine, cuz we's both he-men who only like the ones on wimmin."
Re: Charlie Daniels in that photo. The guy who wrote "Uneasy Rider" and took shots at TV Preachers in "Long Haired Country Boy" morphed into an asswipe of the first rank. It sucks all the more because he was part of soundtrack to my bongs-and-keggers youth.
I will paraphrase his final digital media entry before Jesus called his miserable ass home:
"A beautiful sunset over the river tonight. Always pause to appreciate the simple glories of life. NEVER FORGET BENGHAZI"
I hope Wayne Kramer refuses to shake his hand. Sadly, Wayne is too classy.
Glad you turned out all right, but a guy I knew in high school who was the biggest Charlie Daniels fan I ever saw later got kicked out of college for threatening a Jewish student and shouting "Hitler had the right idea!" in his dorm.
A lot of country artists wind up following their audience down the rabbit hole because the audience loves them when they validate their obsessions from the stage. A lot of rock artists wound up country artists because it was a safe harbor when their moment passed and they couldn't make a living. But check out the Charlie Daniel's Band album Saddle Tramp, it sounds like prog Allman Bros. It's amazing. Sank without a trace.
My brain is choking on the phrase "All parties to these cases" in this sentence: "All parties to these cases, like all members of this Court, agree that an unborn child is a genetically unique human being whose life begins at fertilization..."
Any need to consult anyone else not a party to the case? Just the people in the courtroom this morning count? And since this started as a lawsuit of an IVF lab, is the IVF lab a party to the case? Do IVF labs generally agree that life begins at conception?
Why are they? Can't believe men have been allowed to run things for this long. It's like being around a bunch of toddlers who are dangerously strong enough to split rocks.
You're projecting. We don't want to eradicate you or even boss you around, we'd just like you to mind your own business while you split your rocks, lol.
While reading this, I remembered the Raellians, a UFO cult in the 1990s. The Raellians built a facility to freeze people who died, on the premise that they weren't dead, and could be revived in the future by magic technology. Some baseball legend actually paid them to freeze his head -- Ted Williams? Not sure. Anyway the Raellians fucked up. There was a power failure at the cryo bank and everyone melted. I'm wondering about the implications now. I think the Alabama ruling means we can hire somebody to freeze people who just died, wait a year for a fridge mishap, and then sue the somebody, big time, for... murder. Yeah you sue people who commit murder, that's right. The GOP will back us. We'll be rich.
I vaguely remember that, wasn't "Freeze your head" the discount option? If you could afford real money, you went with the whole-body option. Either way, I don't want to imagine the smell when they opened the door of the fridge, rich and less-rich equal at last.
Yes, Ted Williams. It was actually his son's idea. I think he was trying to make up for being an absent dad by going along with his middle-aged son's plan. The son died of cancer shortly after Ted died.
The anti-abortion people don’t win because people want their policies. They win because they SHOW UP. Day after day, week after week, year in and year out. The handful who show up to represent the overwhelming majority who don’t want this bullshit are fighting an uphill battle. Maybe it’s time to give them a hand. If not now, when?
In Alabama, are women who have miscarriages going to be charged with involuntary manslaughter? And if not, why not? If a couple has ten IVF embryos in deep freeze in a lab, can they claim them as ten dependents? And if not, why not? If that lab burns down in a fire, are the owners charged with multiple homicides? And, etc.
Some people do have a really impressive ability to turn off the thinking the instant it produces an uncomfortable conclusion. Just slam on the brakes and put the car in reverse, you almost drove off the reservation.
Will IVF companies even want to do business in Alabama? Are they on the hook for the leftover embryos a couple doesn't use for whatever reason? Is this whole thing a two-fer: move closer to zygote personhood while also shutting down non-God-based reproduction?
"Are they on the hook for the leftover embryos a couple doesn't use for whatever reason?"
Well, of course they are! Obligated to find a warm female to implant them in, food and housing til age 18, college costs after that. Anything less would be MURDER.
Is Alabama generating all the documents needed for the new Blastocyst Americans? What about issuing Social Security numbers for each one? Registering with the Selective Service? How does this affect census results and taxation? So many details to figure out… unless they’re not really serious about what “personhood” means, of course.
It’s never a bad time to point out that fascism includes male domination of females and the promotion of breeding and housekeeping as the only true purposes for women. Valenti does tireless work exposing fascist attacks on reproductive rights. The Talibama Supremes have done us normals the favor of clarifying the fascist position on fetal personhood. With enough publicity, they may sway a few more voters to step up and say “fuck you” at the ballot box. Professionally and personally this is as important an issue as any at stake in this country and if you don’t sense how angry it makes me, I’ll say “fascist” and “fuck” and “fucking fascists” a few more times.
"The Talibama Supremes have done us normals the favor of clarifying the fascist position on fetal personhood. With enough publicity, they may sway a few more voters to step up and say 'fuck you' at the ballot box."
Periodic reminder that Shelby County vs. Holder--a case brought by a White-flight suburb of Birmingham against voting rights--was what gave Alabama the impetus to ignore its own voters. I'm not filled with confidence on this.
Between the Alabama situation and the Nex Benedict murder in Oklahoma, I have been heartsick and outraged in turn for days.
The Benedict murder is sickening. Would that we could prosecute every politician/influencer/grifter who is making bank on LBGTQ+ hate, not just the fucked up kids they helped create.
Our hands are tied, in a way they wouldn't be if it was a Mullah based in New York City calling for a holy war.
Oh, of fucking course. Would the NYT run an article or column on someone like that? But EVEN THE LIBERAL 🤪 NYT does that with scumbags who are Just Asking Questions about whether certain people should exist. And that's only the diluted stuff - Fox News and the NY Pisst have the good shit, uncut, straight into your veins.
I feel like the very first time you see that a Twitter post from you causes someone to receive death threats, that should be the moment for a hard conversation with yourself about "What the hell am I doing with my life?" For Chaya Raichik, it's Tuesday.
Sometimes I feel like the wild-eyed guy in the meme who is pointing to a wall of clippings with red string forming a spider web connecting them. But it really is all connected, and they aren’t being subtle. Enforced gender roles, anti-LGBT+ hate, attacks on reproductive rights. It’s all a big tangle of the same theocratic, pro-capitalist, pro-patriarchy bullshit. And since its primary goal is to produce more white babies, it’s racist as well.
Thou Shalt Not Violate The Hierarchy.
Speaking as a non-person of the human incubator variety, this is absolutely where the “pro-life” movement was always headed: the fetus is a person, the woman is not. She is either a murderous slut or a mother-to-be depending on whether the pregnancy is wanted or not, but never, ever a person.
I’ll add that these abortion restrictions are deeply intertwined with the Great Replacement theory. They want more white babies. They want women at home. They want happy little patriarchs -- whose domestic, emotional, and sexual needs are being adequately addressed – cheerfully marching into the boss’s factories every day.
Roadblocks will soon be set up at every road and trail the crosses the Alabama state line. Morality Police will man the roadblocks. No female of child-bearing age will be allowed to leave the state. After all, she might be leaving to go get an abortion. Or she might be leaving to get IVF, which is also illegal now. So, can't let 'em leave cause they might be trying to get pregnant or unpregnant.
Although what Valenti points out and Roy highlights about the impact this ruling has on reproductive care vis a vis abortion, it is also a textbook case of conservative overreach.
People who don't think too deeply about connecting the dots to abortion, and even people who disapprove of abortion more generally, are likely to see this as overreach. About 75% of people know someone -- in their family, or at work, or a friend's daughter -- who has been able to have a baby through reproductive technologies. So outside Alabama and perhaps even within it, this ruling will be unpopular. Of course, whether or not mere unpopularity with at least 75% of citizens matters or not remains to be seen. I guess we'll find out in November.
And there are people who can't believe they won't go after birth control. CONTROL is right there in the name!
It's all part of the same thing – abortion, IVF, birth control -- but people don’t want to connect the dots because it’s too monstrous. And needless to say the journalistic dereliction of duty, their treatment of every part of the pattern as a discrete, chin-stroking phenomenon unique to itself, isn’t helping.
They're already (very quietly, only among themselves) talking about reviving the Comstock law that prohibited "obscene matter" through the mail, including instructions and/or materials for contraception. It's still TECHNICALLY law, it's never been rescinded, and I'm sure they're thinking about how to apply it to modern technology.
They're not so quiet about it: https://newrepublic.com/article/179137/trump-comstock-national-abortion-ban
Well hell.
The Comstock Lodestar: Eliminate Any Choices For Women
Saw that yesterday and I'm sure anyone who mentions it in the media will get the guppy face from the Right and the "why, that's ABSURD!" bullshit - like they did last year with Roe.
(You know, just thinking about how much I'm processing about all this... I've always wanted to write a book, but always told myself I had nothing to write ABOUT. If I could get my shit together, maybe...?)
P.S. you'll notice Tubby started to blab about this and they were quick to shut him up. Not quite time yet, which is why Tuck-tuck is making Stern Daddy analogies and Tubby's dictator comments with "aw, that scamp, he says the FUNNIEST THINGS!"
Note the Alabama madness isn't even fetal personhood: it’s Fertilized Ovum personhood, or Blastocyst personhood.
And you dang Incubator American need to start taking your responsibility seriously, especially the melanin deficient ones, and start incubating, stat, if Alabama knows whuts good fer ya…
I was born in Bridgeport AL (NE Corner, near Chattanooga TN) when Dad worked for TVA, and am pleased he came back to NC to run the dairy farm..
Bu.. bu... but I thought we were gonna let the states decide? If the Supreme Court affirms this decision, guess that's no longer an option, huh?
Well, the states have been Very Irresponsible, passing pro-choice laws, so they Obviously need to be reigned in for the good of the Volk.
"Well, ladies, I HOPE YOU'RE SATISFIED."
"Look at how you MADE us be fascists!"
Hope it works! I have been repeatedly horrified by people I know who have reasoned "Well, this thing they want to ban actually saved me -- so they wouldn't actually ban it in *that* case." Leopard, meet face.
My sister worked at a federal office that enabled her to buy a house and raise kids and which a GOP candidate vowed to dissolve. Our parents voted for him. "It's just a campaign promise!"
My brother's health crisis did not financially devastate him only because of Obamacare -- he showed our parents the bills. But they remained committed to seeing the ACA undone. "I'm sure if that handout didn't exist, you would have found a way [to cough up half a million dollars]. God wouldn't let you fail."
That old mix of solipsism, cynicism, and magic-- just as important to GOP success as racism!
"mix of solipsism, cynicism, and magic" very well put. Having faith god will look out for the "good" people, allowing the leopards to lightly nibble their own faces, and their gleeful, unacknowledged blood lust to have the faces of those they oppose be devoured -- it's the Republican Way!
Another thing I'm gonna be repeating - I never, FUCKING NEVER, want to hear anyone say "but why didn't the Germans just resist Hitler?". Motherfuckers, they WEREN'T AFFECTED. THEY got to live their lives and have their businesses and raise their sprogs and it was only the Bad People who the Gestapo came for, the disruptive ones, the societal menaces. (Until the War, of course, but details.) It's really easy to accept fascism when you're not the target. (Until, of course, the occupation forces lead you past the camps and the piles of corpses and yell at you in a language you don't understand about why you didn't DO something. Again, details.)
I guess maybe I'm just yelling for nothing. After all, I half expected Dubya to attack Iran. And I'm pissed about work and maybe I'm just channeling that. But I'd rather be wrong and apologize than be right.
Yeah, for some the epiphany doesn't come til they're sellin' their little sister to a GI for a Hershey bar. And even then, some don't get it.
I don't think Americans know much of anything about how fascism in practice was a joint endeavor among the regime, other established interests/powers, disgruntled reactionary citizens, and complicitors abroad. These Americans, I'm afraid, will go along just as soon as someone explains what's in it for them.
That is beyond my understand.
Well, I think it helps me understand their powerful need for religion. Makes it easier to consign others to hell-on-earth while also thinking you're a nice person.
Road blocks and mandatory menstrual reporting are somehow not violations of civil liberties for the Party of Personal Freedom.
Our home grown patriots' antipathy for the Iranian Islamic State has more to do with envy than any theological or nationalistic hair splitting.
Thirty years ago, Pat Buchanan wrote a column about the Salman Rushdie fatwa. Guess which side of the debate he sympathized with.
Back home, the states would have no problem recruiting volunteers to enforce doctrine.
"Seriously, I get to slap women around? Beat the shit out of bookish teenagers? Kill weirdos? And get a stipend? It sounds too good to be true!"
I don't know about roadblocks. Fear is generally enough. They don't care about any particular fetus (whatever they might say) so much as the punishment and the example made. Don't care about ANY, except in the abstract.
There will also be selective enforcement. Say the governor's daughter wants an out-of-state abortion or IVF. It's impractical to coordinate with the airport and border goons?
... I dunno. Just spitballing about a police state with bigger aspirations than its budget (hello, Alabama - especially as your economy worsens for related reasons).
If they kill the state universities and alienate lotsa big corps, then what? One promising avenue - asset forfeiture. We catch you, we get your stuff, via the courts.
To be absolutely clear, I am appalled. Not actually happy to game it all out.
Alabama will always have Huntsville.
I'm ignorant about Huntsville. A a glance, it looks like aerospace and defense are its biggest employers, it that's what you mean.
Yep. Redstone Arsenal and all the NASA/DOD money.
Most engineers are glibertarians, so I have to wonder how this whole thing will play with that crowd.
Hey, don't forget the NAZIS. Although I guess there wouldn't be many of them still around, unless Dr. Megele's experiments yielded some useful life-prolonging discovery?
Also, "Most engineers are glibertarians..." My God is this true, 1000X.
And no need to wonder, their response will depend 100% on whether they themselves need IVF. If they do, it's a terrible attack on our rights by the state, more proof the goddamn government can't be trusted, vote Republican but HARDER.
OTOH if they don't need IVF, then mumble mumble something about a contract the woman signed with the IVF company, contracts are sacred, only Republicans can be trusted to uphold the sanctity of contracts, vote Republican but HARDER.
It also has two HBCUs (one of which I attended, briefly) that not even other Alabamians like to talk about. I wonder why. . .
I can't remember the name of the Democratic Senator from Alabama that got that NASA rocket facility for his state, but Apollo-era NASA was lousy with such pork-barreling. Sure, we launch the astronauts from Florida, but then we make the handoff to mission control in Houston because...
It's no accident that defense and related R&D go to all fifty states.
We hand off to Houston because LBJ was from Texas.
I worked a summer for NASA in Huntsville. It was a nice place with plenty of Republicans
Did you know that Democrats are responsible for making the space program and Huntsville successful, thus giving you a good job?
"Yes, but then the Democrats expect me to pay taxes and not use racial slurs at work. So what choice do I have but to vote Republican?"
If Alabama loses football at Tuscaloosa and Auburn, then somebody might finally take notice.
This is unfortunately EXACTLY what they're working on as official policy in at least Idaho and Texas.
I live just south of Gym Jordan's district. He's from Urbana Ohio.
There's some rich family outside of Urbana that has been paying for anti-abortion billboards in town for as long as I can remember.
Here's one of my favorites plus one that just went up right after Christmas.
https://substack.com/@brawlatthepoetscafe/note/c-50101840?r=insr
I see these freaky things in Minnesota, outside The Cities. As I live in NY, I was floored the first time.
Driving to the Cities on MN-60 & US-169, you drive past a bevy of mendacious, cloying billboards about Teh Sweet Baybeez around Mankato.
Ha I read that as "beat at 18 days" and thought "yeah, I'm sure they would"
Spare the rod, spoil the fetus.
Personally, I'm beat at 62 years. Think I'll take a nap.
"God's Amazing Design! Male & Female"
God designs (so to speak) all sorts of biological things. It's not surprising that human beings are complicated in spite of being prevalently binary and cis-gender. It's only surprising because we haven't much heard otherwise.
Stephen Jay Gould once wrote an essay about the Ichneumon wasp, and how it was a great cause of consternation for religious folk back in the late 19th century. How could something so horrible possibly be a creation of GOD? These are some profoundly stupid people.
I actually thought of that goddamn wasp as I was typing.
It's laid an egg inside your BRAIN.
For my money, all the philosophical arguments for a godless universe pale against my emotions - a type of cosmic horror. So much to witness. The world is like a Necronomicon, drivin' me nuts. Who needs Cthulhu?
Related to "How could something so horrible possibly be a creation of GOD?":
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a46912376/law-and-order-jack-mccoy-last-show/
Sam Waterston?
Goddamnit! Wrong link, failed to proof. Sorry for seeming obtuse. This time for real: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/535
We've got those right here in oh-so-blue Sonoma County as well. Jesus wept, just not for the reasons they think.
How is that supposed to work?
" Marge, I saw this billboard on the way home and it's really got me thinking. We should join that big church on the edge of town and spend our spare time butting into other people's business"
Just one of the many putative "mental processes" commonly observed on what used to be the far rightward fringes, now dba the mainstream Republican Party. You'd have to be one of those stretchy superheroes to reach across the aisle at this point.
Per Great Replacement theory, my most fervent anti-choice relative said it right out loud: "The wrong people are breeding."
Have you ever seen anti-abortion people protesting outside a clinic that services a majority-minority neighborhood? I haven't.
I have seen them make that play around here, pitching the idea to Black folks that abortion is racist.
Yeah, it's often lil' Black babies on the billboards.
Yup, the one nearest our house.
Never miss an opportunity for "You're the REAL racists!"
I've always just assumed that was their p.r. cover story: "see, we want to protect ALL babies." When I volunteered with PP in NYC many, many moons ago, the staff considered it a relief to work in the clinics in majority Latino/Black neighborhoods because the protesters -- almost exclusively white -- simply didn't show up.
I think the clinic protesters are the same type of white people who are genuinely afraid they'd get robbed or even killed if they went to a major city. The bolder ones probably "conceal carry," assuming they can travel by ground.
Oh sure, undoubtedly that's a huge part of it. But it doesn't speak well of their "christianity" that they allow their racism to get in the way of the mandate from baby Jesus to scream at women seeking reproductive health care.
I could easily see them making a racism-exception for Black infants, because all infants are adorable, and it's not til they're 5 or 6 that you got to call the cops and put 'em in handcuffs for back-sassin' a White teacher.
The second they do something you don't like, they qualify as an adult under the law. State pen for a 6 year old? Sure, for a dusky one. The lighter kind just need some therapy and meds.
The lighter-skinned ones can kill someone in a reckless-driving accident and get off with a diagnosis of Affluenza.
I have seen three or four protestors on the sidewalk in front of the Planned Parenthood center across the street ftom the vet. There's what looks to be a crisis pregancy center just up the street. Although, this IS a heavily Catholic aeea, so that might skew the curve.
Funny how they have determined zygotes and corporations are fully "people", but the evidence for them is still sketchy on the personhood of women or Blacks or migrants.
Good God, so much has been happening in recent years that I've forgotten to rail against corporate personhood. One of my least-favorite ideas.
So glad that footnote in a Gilded Age Supreme Court opinion, inserted by a clerk, became a bedrock principle of our law.
I believe it was a head note in Santa Clara RR
Yes. I was too lazy to look up the specifics.
I know, right?
And giving money is a form of speech. Maybe I'm just too stupid and not-a-lawyer to understand these things.
Ha, remember when we had time to worry about these things, because the worst imaginable thing ever was the Free Trade Area of the Americas?
They want The Hierarchy - parents over children, husband over wife, government over populace, God over all. I keep harping on this but I think it's the plan. They can't assign us to Brave New World type castes - yet - but there's a holy, natural, destined slot for everyone in their nice ordered world to fit in, and they'll call the wrath of Heaven down on you if you try to wiggle out of it.
The idea that Valenti has to deal this hate, insanity, hateful insanity, sociopathy and, yes, I can keep this up for awhile, on a regular basis upsets me no end.
As for Hogan, my recollection is that his claim to fame besides the obvious is that his response to Covid wasn’t literally deadly. Telling people that it was fine to spread and die from the ‘Rona was the Trumpism response. (Just had a flash of the bored little boy look on fPOTUS’ face when he wasn’t speaking during his Covid shows.)
Which is to say that elite media support notwithstanding, Hogan’s not an exception to my claim that every Republican is unfit for office.
As for Alabama, well, it’s Alabama, the whites of whom, with insufficient exceptions to matter, have only harmed the nation. (As for the good whites in Alabama,I feel for them, sure, but story of Lot.)
I know two good whites from Alabama. One moved to L.A. and the other to N.Y.C. Both refer to it as "getting out."
I referenced Lot which is to say there have to be exceptions to my “rule” but, Sodom, not enough to matter. And of course I was also referencing good for the nation and on that scale… bupkis.
Try this on for size:
“Unborn children are ‘children’…without exception based on developmental stage, physical location, or any other ancillary characteristics.”
It is a known and fairly common occurrence for an egg to be fertilized but fail to implant and it then gets flushed out with the normal menstrual cycle. Chances are pretty good most women have had this happen.
Under the AL Supremes theory, ALL women are guilty of homicide in one form or another. Had a miscarriage? You're a murderer. Had an egg fail to implant? You're a murderer. Doesn't matter that you had no way of knowing you had a first-week miscarriage or an egg that failed to implant. You killed a child!!!
So if this doctrine is taken to heart, we have no choice but to place all women of child-bearing age under arrest. They are, after all, either murderers or soon-to-be killers. Every one of them.
Yup. "We have to prevent attempted murder by forbidding women to have periods."
Oh they have tried this on for size. Didn't they go after a woman in Ohio for having a miscarriage?
Yep, after trying to get help at an ER more than one time.
But she wasn't "white" so there is that.
I always think the believers should blame God for all these millions of murders. The theory of embryonic personhood implies its own theology. He slaughters these children, mostly before their mothers know they even exist, but the omniscient one knows, by definition; he's present at every sex act, watching the little sperm cells on their marathon race up to the fallopian tubes and cheering on his favorites, and whenever one of them wins he makes a decision about the newly created child, condemning ten or twenty percent of them to death for his own mysterious reasons. This is why humans must not interfere: the judgment has already been made.
Every time a man jerks off, it's a mass murder.
As was so often the case, the Monty Python crew got there first. Never waste the sacred sperm!
Terry Jones doing the chores in a house dress with a baby dropping out every few minutes.
Philip Roth, too, although I forget in which novel. I don't think Portnoy, "ironically."
It was bad enough when current events started mirroring decades old Firesign material, but when one of our two major political parties can be summed up by two Python bits (Every Sperm and the Very Silly Party) Big Trouble has taken a quantum leap forward.
First as farce, then as tragedy. Did I get that right?
Let's ask Slavov Zizek.
Don't like half of fertilized ova fil to implant? How will Alabama deal with that. I mean poorly of course but that is to be expected
Question rejected, insufficient information provided, whir, click. Please input skin color of woman in question, whir, click.
This assumes they're capable of grasping, let alone formulating, a coherent theology. Anything that enforces the natural order is the will of God, everything else may be ignored as irrelevant to God's will. That's as far as they get, and as far as they want to get.
I believe in Homicide
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMlpqOsc2BU
They are, after all, either murderers or soon-to-be killers. Every one of them.
Well except for the ones denying sex to incels
She killed my boner!
If a fetus threatens someone's life, does the Stand Your Ground defense apply? Can you at least sue it?
Well I imagine conservatives would consider it a minor, so you can't sue it but under many state laws you can now send it to work in a manufacturing job.
If they feel the call, and it's Black, they'll try it as an adult.
Women often don't get to claim Stand Your Ground
This time I really think they've gone too far. I think they would give anything for a do over on Dodd.
Some piss take from some fossilized legacy media this week was talking about
How Democrats were just worn out and lacked the will to fight this time around. They're confused, I think, because we don't walk around in a maniacal froth all the time like the Trump assholes. The Dems I know, especially the women, are nursing a cold hard fury and they can't wait to exercise the franchise.
Would that the franchise included punching Ezra Klein in the nuts.
"How Democrats were just worn out and lacked the will to fight this time around. They're confused, I think, because we don't walk around in a maniacal froth all the time like the Trump assholes."
Voter Suppression, Prestige Media Version
"Voting? Eh, the Kool Kids are all givin' it a hard pass."
That Ezra Klein piece was like 2 a.m. dorm room noodling, not a practical plan on any level. While reading it I kept thinking of Jeff Goldblum’s line in Jurassic Park: “so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
Dorm room is right. Needs several more credits.
Please tell me it was in the NY Times, because I cancelled my subscription about a year ago and I always like hearing confirmation that I'm right about something. OTOH, if it was in the WaPo, then I was right TWO years ago.
Can't speak for anyone else, but I'd describe my level of resolve over this election as "Londoner under the Blitz."
Alas, they didn't read the line in tiny font at the bottom of the receipt "No Returns, Consult The Manufacturer".
The never-Trump wing would love a do-over on Dobbs, but they are irrelevant to politics at the moment. Republicans are going to keep reaching until their knuckles are rapped with an architect's ruler, the triangular one maid of aluminum. A nun in grade school used one, it focuses the mind wonderfully.
What's Junkpuncho The Junk Punching Llama up to these days?
Let me just observe that the photo you chose for today is hilarious. "Let's show we're bros through our body language, but don't let your titties get close to mine, cuz we's both he-men who only like the ones on wimmin."
Re: Charlie Daniels in that photo. The guy who wrote "Uneasy Rider" and took shots at TV Preachers in "Long Haired Country Boy" morphed into an asswipe of the first rank. It sucks all the more because he was part of soundtrack to my bongs-and-keggers youth.
I will paraphrase his final digital media entry before Jesus called his miserable ass home:
"A beautiful sunset over the river tonight. Always pause to appreciate the simple glories of life. NEVER FORGET BENGHAZI"
I hope Wayne Kramer refuses to shake his hand. Sadly, Wayne is too classy.
Glad you turned out all right, but a guy I knew in high school who was the biggest Charlie Daniels fan I ever saw later got kicked out of college for threatening a Jewish student and shouting "Hitler had the right idea!" in his dorm.
A lot of country artists wind up following their audience down the rabbit hole because the audience loves them when they validate their obsessions from the stage. A lot of rock artists wound up country artists because it was a safe harbor when their moment passed and they couldn't make a living. But check out the Charlie Daniel's Band album Saddle Tramp, it sounds like prog Allman Bros. It's amazing. Sank without a trace.
GOP in 2024: "Ben who?"
My brain is choking on the phrase "All parties to these cases" in this sentence: "All parties to these cases, like all members of this Court, agree that an unborn child is a genetically unique human being whose life begins at fertilization..."
Any need to consult anyone else not a party to the case? Just the people in the courtroom this morning count? And since this started as a lawsuit of an IVF lab, is the IVF lab a party to the case? Do IVF labs generally agree that life begins at conception?
All parties agree that life doesn’t begin until you hear Ella Fitzgerald. QED
You go to better parties than I do.
She's just too uppity
To have babies at eight
Goes to the clinic
When her period's late
She'll kick the ass
of a bigot she hates
That's why the lady is a tramp
She’s teaching the angels to sing.
So no one was alive until November 21, 1934 when Ella debuted at Amateur Night at The Apollo?
Exactly. She sang them into being like something out of Finnish mythology.
Men.
Why are they? Can't believe men have been allowed to run things for this long. It's like being around a bunch of toddlers who are dangerously strong enough to split rocks.
Liked this comment in the hopes that the women might keep me around as a pet once they set things straight.
You're projecting. We don't want to eradicate you or even boss you around, we'd just like you to mind your own business while you split your rocks, lol.
Oh, I'm real good at that, just ask my wife.
Yeah, but just look who gets control when it's women: Thatcher, Meir, Clinton would have if we lived in a real democracy. Or am I being too nihilist?
This is Imelda Marcos erasure!
Ah, so maybe this "in control" thing is also a problem.
So you’re going to pick out a few women when men are havocking outchear.
Gotcha.
Jacinda Ardern, and Sanna Marin were decent female PMs
While reading this, I remembered the Raellians, a UFO cult in the 1990s. The Raellians built a facility to freeze people who died, on the premise that they weren't dead, and could be revived in the future by magic technology. Some baseball legend actually paid them to freeze his head -- Ted Williams? Not sure. Anyway the Raellians fucked up. There was a power failure at the cryo bank and everyone melted. I'm wondering about the implications now. I think the Alabama ruling means we can hire somebody to freeze people who just died, wait a year for a fridge mishap, and then sue the somebody, big time, for... murder. Yeah you sue people who commit murder, that's right. The GOP will back us. We'll be rich.
I vaguely remember that, wasn't "Freeze your head" the discount option? If you could afford real money, you went with the whole-body option. Either way, I don't want to imagine the smell when they opened the door of the fridge, rich and less-rich equal at last.
Freeze Your Head is the worst Jefferson Airplane song.
That shit the Raelians sell you don't do anything at all
Yes, Ted Williams. It was actually his son's idea. I think he was trying to make up for being an absent dad by going along with his middle-aged son's plan. The son died of cancer shortly after Ted died.
The Splendid Splinter
In a permanent winter
Til an early thaw
Left a puddle on the flaw
The anti-abortion people don’t win because people want their policies. They win because they SHOW UP. Day after day, week after week, year in and year out. The handful who show up to represent the overwhelming majority who don’t want this bullshit are fighting an uphill battle. Maybe it’s time to give them a hand. If not now, when?
https://youtu.be/fGk263hJrhI?si=Mk-Djn0CVwGvp7lM
In Alabama, are women who have miscarriages going to be charged with involuntary manslaughter? And if not, why not? If a couple has ten IVF embryos in deep freeze in a lab, can they claim them as ten dependents? And if not, why not? If that lab burns down in a fire, are the owners charged with multiple homicides? And, etc.
Ah, I see what you're doing there, and this "thinking" business must stop. At least within the boundaries of the State of Alabama.
Some people do have a really impressive ability to turn off the thinking the instant it produces an uncomfortable conclusion. Just slam on the brakes and put the car in reverse, you almost drove off the reservation.
Logic, what does that even mean?
Will IVF companies even want to do business in Alabama? Are they on the hook for the leftover embryos a couple doesn't use for whatever reason? Is this whole thing a two-fer: move closer to zygote personhood while also shutting down non-God-based reproduction?
"Are they on the hook for the leftover embryos a couple doesn't use for whatever reason?"
Well, of course they are! Obligated to find a warm female to implant them in, food and housing til age 18, college costs after that. Anything less would be MURDER.
Is Alabama generating all the documents needed for the new Blastocyst Americans? What about issuing Social Security numbers for each one? Registering with the Selective Service? How does this affect census results and taxation? So many details to figure out… unless they’re not really serious about what “personhood” means, of course.
Time to dust off that old three-fifths rule. Suddenly, Alabama has 65 Electoral Votes.
I think ANCILLARY CHARACTERISTICS refers to carrying a dead, or severely handicapped likely to die shortly after birth, fetuses
I read it as, "Oh, sure, this particular blastocyst just happens to be implanted inside a real, live woman, but that's, you know, ancillary."
It’s never a bad time to point out that fascism includes male domination of females and the promotion of breeding and housekeeping as the only true purposes for women. Valenti does tireless work exposing fascist attacks on reproductive rights. The Talibama Supremes have done us normals the favor of clarifying the fascist position on fetal personhood. With enough publicity, they may sway a few more voters to step up and say “fuck you” at the ballot box. Professionally and personally this is as important an issue as any at stake in this country and if you don’t sense how angry it makes me, I’ll say “fascist” and “fuck” and “fucking fascists” a few more times.
"The Talibama Supremes have done us normals the favor of clarifying the fascist position on fetal personhood. With enough publicity, they may sway a few more voters to step up and say 'fuck you' at the ballot box."
Periodic reminder that Shelby County vs. Holder--a case brought by a White-flight suburb of Birmingham against voting rights--was what gave Alabama the impetus to ignore its own voters. I'm not filled with confidence on this.