Eh. I'm a little tired -- the old wake too early after too little sleep...
Given that pro-choice is hugely popular, of course if that's the only issue on a ballot, it'll win, duh.
Bu-u-ut...
Then far too many of the same people who vote for choice on a referendum elect Republicans who of course are dedicated to limiting it as much as possible.
I mean, far too many of these voters like choice but can't make the very, very small jump to choosing not to elect politicians dedicated to ending it as a practical matter. I mean, if those people are sooo pro-choice and supporting referendums that protect or whatever, there'd have been blue tsunamis in Kansas and Wisconsin and Ohio (which just a year earlier sent JD Vance to the senate).
Please.
And for the zillionth time, while I realize the voters can do the right thing, there's not a single time that I'd trust them to do the right thing.
Yup. The obvious answer to Roy’s question of how they do it is a national ban, and until pro-choice-issue votes reliably translate into anti-Republican votes, that will be a threat. The GOP is already far too close to the necessary trifecta for comfort.
"...far too many of these voters like choice but can't make the very, very small jump to choosing not to elect politicians dedicated to ending it as a practical matter."
According to a couple of friends in Kansas and Ohio, what many of these voters can't manage is the very, very big jump to vote for a Democrat. So no blue waves regardless of referendums.
Evidently the voters have the same problem as a lot of Democrats - if they just appeal to bipartisanship and compromise, everything will be fine. Meanwhile the GOP is sharpening their axes.
One of the reasons I hate the current usage of the term "identity politics" as if politics was ever about anything else. "People like us don't ____" is pure identity, and "vote for the Democrats" often fills in the blank.
A couple weeks ago, I sent an apology note to Amanda Marcote. Not that I'd ever had any interaction with her. When she was at Pandagon, she repeatedly said the bastards were never going to stop at Roe V Wade. They'd come for any and all kinds of contraception. That, in addition to full on culture war to the death.
I though she was needlessly overstating the danger.
I'd been paying attention to the freaks since the rise of Falwell. I knew what they thought and what they wanted. My error was in thinking that the grownups would keep them under control. Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-A should have cured me of that. I still believed the repeal of abortion rights would remain the carrot, held just out of the theocons reach, the better to keep them stirred up and marching to the pols. Wrong on all counts. So, I thought I owed her one, and told her as much.
So much for my being the smart, cynical guy who has it all figured out.
Aug 10, 2023·edited Aug 10, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso
I've made the same mistake, on other issues. I chalk it up to a simple lack of imagination, because even imagination does have its limits. For example, "Aw, c'mon, Donald Trump can't possibly win!" helped me confidently walk into a voting booth in Wisconsin in 2016 and cast my vote for Jill Stein.
My first eligible vote was 1980. I was a college puke with an absentee ballot. I put in my mark for Gus Hall, so the folks in my home town would see it. Because, haw haw haw, it's all a big joke and no way is that broken down actor Reagan gonna make it into the White House.
I read an article the other day about a pastor in some Evangelical Church who was kind of freaked at his parishioners. He was teaching the Beatitudes("What’s so special about cheesemakers?) and the congregation was all like
" when did they slip all this mushy woke bullshit into our Holy Bibles?"
“remember that the other guys are fascists and you have to be prepared for them to act like it”
So true and also, they’ll never stop trying to suppress women and “the others.” We were guilty of complacency after the positive steps on civil and reproductive rights and I hope we’ve learned our lesson: the right will always be working to drag the country back to 1850 ( or in Wisconsin’s case, 1849).
An excellent example of Wilhoit’s law. The Wiki page linked to is for a different Wilhoit (Francis) from the one (Frank) who came up with the law. The Wiki article does note this misattribution. Maybe the confusion is due to the fact that Francis is a political scientist so it would presumably have come up with such a brilliant theory. Frank is a composer, and came up with his dictum, after Francis’s 2010 death, in a comment to s blog post. See, profound shit comes down in blog comments! From musicians!
It was a reply in Crooked Timber. The actual comment is much longer than the one-sentence law. The original post was about Jonathan Chait and Sean Wilentz’s hard-on against progressives and socialists who, in their view, appropriate liberal ideas and call them socialist or progressive.
For us devoted (or maybe just compulsive?) internet commenters, this is the equivalent of Lana Turner being discovered in Schwan's drugstore. It could happen to you!
Aug 10, 2023·edited Aug 10, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso
"appropriate liberal ideas and call them socialist or progressive"
How fucked-up is that? If tomorrow some Republican politician signed on to the Green New Deal and pronounced it "Conservative", am I supposed to get mad about that?
Well, you could hardly blame the socialists, when the Republicans are calling things like *fixing bridges* and *prosecuting insurrectionists*, Marxist.
Florida has shown the way to deal with things the voters demand but that Republicans don't want. Florida voters overwhelmingly passed an initiative to restore voting rights to convicted felons who had served their time and returned to being good citizens. The Republican legislature was bound by this ballot measure, so they wrote the appropriate law to restore those rights . . . to felons who had paid all their fines, court costs, and other fees while providing no mechanism whatsoever for applicants to verify those fees or even determine what was owed. Thus, the majority of convicted felons are still barred from voting because the state says "you owe us money, but we're not going to tell how how much or where to pay it."
I can see such methodology being used for denying women abortion rights. Should Ohio pass the abortion rights measure and reproductive freedom becomes enshrined in the state constitution, Ohio Republicans can simply pass a law barring clinics from advertising, having signage, or otherwise allowing the public to discover a clinic's existence. After all, if you can't find an abortion provider, you can't get an abortion!
Look for similar scummy tactics all over this land as conservative efforts to coerce the population with unpopular policies keep running into more and more resistance.
Thinking of the ridiculous square footage requirements imposed on adult shops in NY. One I went to (only there for the articles, I swear!) had a front and back section linked by a long bare corridor, expanding their floor space for as cheap as possible. Some took to selling regular magazines and even luggage. One in Rochester (very nice owners) sold vintage movies in addition to their usual VHS selection.
And to add shit frosting to their crap cake, Florida then arrested ex-felons who only heard they had their rights restored and voted and touted it as “voter fraud!!1!”
I refuse to take credit for going too far when stacked aside the current crop of fascist scum passing as humans for purposes of getting elected to offices whence they degrade humanity.
"...if you don’t like what voters demand, just make it illegal... If voters use their power to require something you don’t agree with, just take it away from them."
The crux. And, as with reproductive freedom, various gun laws, civil rights, and more, you have a Supreme Court in your arsenal who will invent a way to make whatever you've done in the states constitutional, national, and permanent.
Was the line-spacing off? Line spacing was very important to the Founders, you know, all of the handwritten documents on which our government is based attest to this.
Technically the initiative addressed two topics, not just one, if you squinted and chose to read it that way. Of course, it had been drafted that way to remove ambiguity and the “hOw wiLL YoU pAy fOR iT???!?” challenge, so: Catch-22.
But it’s up to the Executive branch to enforce (or not) those SC rulings. If Dems won’t pack the Court, at least ignore them. “The Court is wrong on Dobbs and we’ll continue to act under Roe. PS fuck you.”
It struck me we don't get a Constitutiinal Crisis (tm) until 2 branches actually conflict. While the Joker Party is ready, the Democrats and what's left of the Republican Party seem reluctant to go to the mattresses just yet. Conventional wisdom is that they're feckless cowards, but I think their main concern is nobody knows what the fuck will happen if they do, and you may have noticed things aren't all that stable right now. The federal and state indictments are a last chance attempt to have the System deal with a direct threat to its legitimacy, if that fails a Constitutional Crisis will start looking pretty good compared to the alternatives.
That state Supreme Court bit was a big factor in Michigan voters being able to flip the state. By the 2022 election, the Court had thrown out every GOP effort to block new maps drawn by an independent re-districting commission. No-reason absentee ballots and same-day registration had passed by referendum in 2018, when Whitmer was elected governor, along with Dems in Secretary of State and AG offices. A series of sane Court actions, a hell of a lot of grassroots work, and Dobbs blowback led to the 2022 trifecta.
Oh yes, absolutely. Guy who's completely fucking nuts throws a punch at a guy who's only slightly less nuts because Mr. slightly-less-nuts doesn't want to storm the Capitol that afternoon, some shit like that. They all deserve each other.
In Colorado, where the state party no longer has sufficient funds to pay for staff or even the light bill, the newly-elected chair has announced that his primary mission is to go after elected Republicans who aren't sufficiently nuts.
Aug 10, 2023·edited Aug 10, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso
Yes, this. So much hair-splitting from right-wingers over the basic question of "denied the right to vote." If you're allowed to carry out the physical act of voting, but then we don't, you know, actually USE your vote in determining who won, were you really denied in a way sufficient to trigger legal action? Gimme a fucking break, if the guy who lost doesn't leave office, you don't have democracy, you don't even have elections, really, all you have is a dumb show.
I'm still laughing at Trump's "heart of hearts" defense. Dude, maybe Elizabeth Holmes SINCERELY believed that Theranos really could do all the stuff they claimed with a single drop of blood. Sure, the people on her payroll told her the tests didn't work, but she just REALLY believed, so what can we do but throw up our hands and let her go?
Aug 10, 2023·edited Aug 10, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso
“Heart of hearts”—You know they’re sincere when they lunge for the Shakespeare references. “Shakespeare, a very good author by the way, it’s being recognized more and more, wrote that great show, the Scottish one, McCheese it’s called, beautiful show, and that Lady McCheese, strong woman, a little pushy—little pushy—but she always supported her man, did what’s right, and that’s what we want, isn’t it fellas?”
“As you can plainly see, your honor, my client is innocent.”
Very well done, but it's kind of scary how we can just fall into Trump's voice at any time. The right-wingers are right about this much: He really does live rent-free in our heads.
Related: Alabama GOP straight up admits they, and likely the Louisiana and Texas GOPs, can’t win a fair fight. Persuasion doesn’t even occur to them, the only answer is voter suppression.
“Let me scare you a little bit more; Texas has between five and ten congressmen that are Republicans that could shift the other way,” he continued. “How could we win the House back ever again if we’re talking about losing two in Louisiana, and losing five to ten in Texas? The answer’s simple: It’s never.”
We can propose laws our citizens actually want to live under -- but then who are we, if other people just live their lives without our interference? We are nobody.
Exactly! Like if you tell the truth, then maybe people are just agreeing with you because it's true, but if all you tell are lies, then you know when people agree it's because they fear you.
Excellent point. Being right proves zilch. You have to be very, very wrong if you want to use other people to prove you are more important than reality.
Sigh. Thanks, I guess, from Ohio for the dose of reality. We've been feeling pretty happy here about getting people to the polls to vote on an issue that, on its face, had nothing to do with abortion. Getting people to vote in November on the reproductive rights constitutional amendment should be easier. But, of course, the fight won't end there.
We have a history in Ohio of the Republican supermajority ignoring the state constitution and the Ohio Supreme Court. In 1997, the Ohio Supreme Court found that our system for funding public schools was unconstitutional, and it still hasn't been fixed. Instead, the assholes instituted a private school voucher system that they keep expanding. That's being challenged by public school advocates and is in the courts now.
But the better example is our constitutional amendment to end gerrymandering. We the voters were hoodwinked into amending the constitution in 2018 to create a redistricting commission that was supposed to change the way state and congressional districts are drawn. But the constitutional amendment we passed failed miserably because the redistricting commission is controlled by the people currently in power, the Republican supermajority, who created the maps they wanted and then ignored the Ohio Supreme Court when it found that the maps were unconstitutional. They gamed the system by waiting until elections were imminent and then getting a federal court order allowing them to use the maps that the state court had found were unconstitutional. We'll see a new constitutional amendment on the ballot soon that will try to fix the problem, but I have no doubt that the assholes will find ways to keep their power no matter what the constitution and the courts say.
And voters really don't want to vote for Democrats here, even though that would be the obvious way to protect reproductive rights. We had an opportunity to elect 3 pro-choice Dems to the Ohio Supreme Court last year, and the voters chose Republicans for all 3 seats. I've worked the polls in a Repubican county east of Cleveland and watched voter after voter simply grab a Republican slate card on the way in to vote the slate.
Wisconsin's Supreme Court races are officially nonpartisan, but that's not fooling anyone, everybody knows which one is which. But I still wonder if it doesn't offer just enough of a fig leaf for the loyal Republican voter who doesn't want her reproductive rights taken away. "Well, *technically* I didn't vote for a Democrat..."
The Republicans just changed the law in Ohio last year (for, I think, obvious reasons). All our judicial general elections for judges used to be nonpartisan. (We always had, and still have, partisan primaries.) But they changed it so that the general elections for Supreme Court and lower appellate court judges are partisan now. General elections for trial court judges remain nonpartisan.
I made the mistake of clicking through to the American Spectator article; the beginning was bad enough ("the Dems lie to the people! LIE! How dare they, that's OUR schtick!") but I got to the link to the story about "TRANS INDIVIDUALS SEEK EUTHANASIA" and I had to tap out before I started punching things.
"Ohio isn’t the only state in which efforts are being made to relieve voters of the burden of a million constitutional amendments to vote on every year."
Oh, is that the number? A MILLION? I know it must be true, because The American Spectator NEVER LIES.
Aug 10, 2023·edited Aug 10, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso
Also, how goddamn helpful of them, to attempt to relieve the poor voters of this burden of deciding things for themselves. Life is full of such people.
To be fair, if the legislature does not lege, it is up to their electors to seize the means of corrup- - sorry, let me try this again...
It is up to the citizenry to break a few kneeca - - no, that's not it...
When the lege don't lege
The voters pledge
To take it upon themselves
Lege better watch out
Or they'll lose in a rout
And get stuck back on their shelves
Y'all remember California Prop. 13? The Godfather of initiatives. Saved corporations (the sponsors of the thing) billions in property tax. That was the mid-70's. It was called Proposition 13 because it was the 13th attempt in the history of California to get an initiative on a state-wide ballots. It was in fact only the 7th to qualify. Since then, props have become a real industry unto themselves. As of last year, Californians have placed 170 initiatives on ballots.
All to say that even when there's a massive majority in each house and on the court, under which condition the lege should be crankin' out laws LIKE SAUSAGES the people still got the bit between their teefs. And boy/girl does it piss off a lot of Californians who simply want the lege to do its damn job. Because the average voter pamphlet is in fact encyclopedia-sized and indecipherable, and the ballots are too damn long!
By the by, it continues to gall me how conservatives insist Texas and Florida are bastions of pure unadulterated FREEDOM at the same time they're forging exciting new ideas in authoritarianism.
The Guardian had one of those "Iowa voters stick by Trump" stories (AND GODDAMMIT WHY DO I KEEP READING THIS SHIT) but it had an interesting aside from the Chair of the Democratic Party in one rural Iowa county. Seems wind turbines have really taken off there, providing a nice, steady property tax income to the county and a pretty massive WINDfall to some farmers (hey, see what I did there?) Anyway, the Dem party chair said people just refused to give the Democrats any credit or to see the Republicans as an obstacle to their wealth and economic growth (she also blamed the national party for not devoting more resources to talking to rural voters.)
How it's related is that sometimes I think you just gotta take the W and move on. If Iowa farmers enthusiastically embrace wind and solar and consequently reduce the destructiveness of climate change, then I'll be happy with that, the Dems will just need to find their votes somewhere else.
Yea, but the Demoncrats were from the gubbermint and they were there to help, one of the most blood-chilling, horrifying, concepts in the world, often used to scare misbehaving children and to curdle innocent cows’ milk. Please, won’t someone think of the cows?
Also solar installations near Box Elder in western South Dakota. Those are infinitely easier than turbines to remove when their useful life is over, and the rancher can get $800 per year in rent, whereas it’s only worth $30/year as grazing land.
It's interesting how closely the results track with the poll numbers on November's abortion-rights referendum (within a point, I think). So we now have a measure of how many principled people say, "Well, I'm against abortion, but I still don't like the idea of the legislature limiting our rights" and it's ZERO.
It would be interesting to see the Venn diagram overlap of those who think all abortion should be illegal, and those who believe in the existence of angels. Similarly, of those against abortion, and those in favor of the death penalty. Of course the ur-contradiction of them all is believing you revere life, whilie being a Republican-"The Party of Cruelty, Fascism, and Unlimited Guns." Then again, religion is a kind of socially-sanctioned insanity, so maybe that accounts for everything.
I would be interested in an actual statistical breakdown, but from what I'm hearing from people who knocked doors it really is people who are anti-abortion who voted yes on Issue 1.
Yep, Total War. Once you grasp that they truly, deeply, sincerely believe that tens of thousands of babies (babies! Cute little helpless babies with their little toes and fingers!) are MURDERED every day! RIPPED APART and flushed down the sewer! For NO REASON other than shallow convenience and cruelty! They are in a holy war with EVIL, with SATAN himself. Any action taken to fight this monstrous evil is just and righteous. Certainly there's a lot of mushy agreement that the sluts should just keep an aspirin between their knees and ixnay on the yevil, , but the engine driving this holy war Believe. They've given up any attempt to convince anyone of anything, mainly because every argument they've tried won't carry the water they need. They believe those cute little babies, those "potential humans", have immortal souls, but they know that dog won't hunt. Their "scientific" arguments are a joke, and their deep well of compassion for The Babies is bone dry once the little tykes pop their little heads out. So, brute force it is then. God will reward them. Hell, He's provided them with Trump who made that abomination Roe dissappear, what can't He do?
History teaches us religious wars are the worst wars, the insane logic of war is amplified by the insane logic of people who believe their fight is transcendental and they must prevail, no matter what generals babble about casualties and logistics. They will not go quietly.
My understanding is you can be washed clean of sin in the blood of Christ by choosing him as your one true and only personal savior and being born again in his love. So the forced-into-life unloved suffering poverty babies are really not your problem at that point.
Well, when you put it like that, perhaps a reasonable, moderate, proposed 8-1/2 month ban on all abortions is an appropriate way to, er, split the baby on this issue.
Eh. I'm a little tired -- the old wake too early after too little sleep...
Given that pro-choice is hugely popular, of course if that's the only issue on a ballot, it'll win, duh.
Bu-u-ut...
Then far too many of the same people who vote for choice on a referendum elect Republicans who of course are dedicated to limiting it as much as possible.
I mean, far too many of these voters like choice but can't make the very, very small jump to choosing not to elect politicians dedicated to ending it as a practical matter. I mean, if those people are sooo pro-choice and supporting referendums that protect or whatever, there'd have been blue tsunamis in Kansas and Wisconsin and Ohio (which just a year earlier sent JD Vance to the senate).
Please.
And for the zillionth time, while I realize the voters can do the right thing, there's not a single time that I'd trust them to do the right thing.
Yup. The obvious answer to Roy’s question of how they do it is a national ban, and until pro-choice-issue votes reliably translate into anti-Republican votes, that will be a threat. The GOP is already far too close to the necessary trifecta for comfort.
Yes. And that “until” is doing some heavy lifting...
"...far too many of these voters like choice but can't make the very, very small jump to choosing not to elect politicians dedicated to ending it as a practical matter."
According to a couple of friends in Kansas and Ohio, what many of these voters can't manage is the very, very big jump to vote for a Democrat. So no blue waves regardless of referendums.
As I said, that disability, so to speak, is why I distrust the American voter.
Trust 'em to do what they gonna do.
Hope they don't.
Evidently the voters have the same problem as a lot of Democrats - if they just appeal to bipartisanship and compromise, everything will be fine. Meanwhile the GOP is sharpening their axes.
One of the reasons I hate the current usage of the term "identity politics" as if politics was ever about anything else. "People like us don't ____" is pure identity, and "vote for the Democrats" often fills in the blank.
We all know that "identity politics" is just conservative code speak for "what, I gotta give a rat's ass about SOMEONE ELSE?".
The reason?
Racists like their right to abortions, too.
Likely!
A couple weeks ago, I sent an apology note to Amanda Marcote. Not that I'd ever had any interaction with her. When she was at Pandagon, she repeatedly said the bastards were never going to stop at Roe V Wade. They'd come for any and all kinds of contraception. That, in addition to full on culture war to the death.
I though she was needlessly overstating the danger.
I'd been paying attention to the freaks since the rise of Falwell. I knew what they thought and what they wanted. My error was in thinking that the grownups would keep them under control. Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-A should have cured me of that. I still believed the repeal of abortion rights would remain the carrot, held just out of the theocons reach, the better to keep them stirred up and marching to the pols. Wrong on all counts. So, I thought I owed her one, and told her as much.
So much for my being the smart, cynical guy who has it all figured out.
I've made the same mistake, on other issues. I chalk it up to a simple lack of imagination, because even imagination does have its limits. For example, "Aw, c'mon, Donald Trump can't possibly win!" helped me confidently walk into a voting booth in Wisconsin in 2016 and cast my vote for Jill Stein.
I'd love to be all judgemental and shit but...
My first eligible vote was 1980. I was a college puke with an absentee ballot. I put in my mark for Gus Hall, so the folks in my home town would see it. Because, haw haw haw, it's all a big joke and no way is that broken down actor Reagan gonna make it into the White House.
Whoopsie
Whoa, Gus Hall. Game recognize game.
I had a freebie my first time*.
1972.
Shirley Chisholm!
*Oof. That reads poorly. Should change.
Probly not...
It's your fault McGovern lost!
I take the heat so Dick walks free.
"Resistance is futile, broodsows -"
You sure you're not from Ohio?
I read an article the other day about a pastor in some Evangelical Church who was kind of freaked at his parishioners. He was teaching the Beatitudes("What’s so special about cheesemakers?) and the congregation was all like
" when did they slip all this mushy woke bullshit into our Holy Bibles?"
FAFO Reverend.
"I know, Rev! Without cheese, life itself would have no meaning!"
Crow: AMERICA IS LEANING ON CHEESE!
My mantra: Cheese is my middle name, and butter is my religion.
Reversed, but I feel you. [also these comments]
“remember that the other guys are fascists and you have to be prepared for them to act like it”
So true and also, they’ll never stop trying to suppress women and “the others.” We were guilty of complacency after the positive steps on civil and reproductive rights and I hope we’ve learned our lesson: the right will always be working to drag the country back to 1850 ( or in Wisconsin’s case, 1849).
Yeah, we're always about a year behind everyone else, so math checks out.
An excellent example of Wilhoit’s law. The Wiki page linked to is for a different Wilhoit (Francis) from the one (Frank) who came up with the law. The Wiki article does note this misattribution. Maybe the confusion is due to the fact that Francis is a political scientist so it would presumably have come up with such a brilliant theory. Frank is a composer, and came up with his dictum, after Francis’s 2010 death, in a comment to s blog post. See, profound shit comes down in blog comments! From musicians!
This I did not know, thanks!
It was a reply in Crooked Timber. The actual comment is much longer than the one-sentence law. The original post was about Jonathan Chait and Sean Wilentz’s hard-on against progressives and socialists who, in their view, appropriate liberal ideas and call them socialist or progressive.
https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/
My heart done bleed for Chait and Wilentz, particularly when conservatives seize liberal ideas and turn them into a Bizarro version.
For us devoted (or maybe just compulsive?) internet commenters, this is the equivalent of Lana Turner being discovered in Schwan's drugstore. It could happen to you!
HT to John R Garrett
The only commenter in that thread who responded to Wilhoit:
"Frank Wilhoit @ 26 – what he said. Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
'There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.'
The most substantive comment I’ve seen here or anywhere in some time: reread, rethink."
They also serve who only click and like.
Service with a sneer!
"appropriate liberal ideas and call them socialist or progressive"
How fucked-up is that? If tomorrow some Republican politician signed on to the Green New Deal and pronounced it "Conservative", am I supposed to get mad about that?
"Stop agreeing with me, dammit!"
Well, you could hardly blame the socialists, when the Republicans are calling things like *fixing bridges* and *prosecuting insurrectionists*, Marxist.
*fixing bridges* and *prosecuting insurrectionists* are one and the same, doncha know...
Florida has shown the way to deal with things the voters demand but that Republicans don't want. Florida voters overwhelmingly passed an initiative to restore voting rights to convicted felons who had served their time and returned to being good citizens. The Republican legislature was bound by this ballot measure, so they wrote the appropriate law to restore those rights . . . to felons who had paid all their fines, court costs, and other fees while providing no mechanism whatsoever for applicants to verify those fees or even determine what was owed. Thus, the majority of convicted felons are still barred from voting because the state says "you owe us money, but we're not going to tell how how much or where to pay it."
I can see such methodology being used for denying women abortion rights. Should Ohio pass the abortion rights measure and reproductive freedom becomes enshrined in the state constitution, Ohio Republicans can simply pass a law barring clinics from advertising, having signage, or otherwise allowing the public to discover a clinic's existence. After all, if you can't find an abortion provider, you can't get an abortion!
Look for similar scummy tactics all over this land as conservative efforts to coerce the population with unpopular policies keep running into more and more resistance.
I'm expecting insane requirements for physicians providing abortion services, medical "literacy" tests that are impossible to pass and the like.
Don't forget the bizarre requirements for clinics; anti-choice folks seem to really like those.
The door must be painted a specific shade of purple that paint companies are forbidden by law to produce. It'll be worse than the worst HOA.
Clinics to be open on alternate Flursdays.
Only open 12 hours a day, for no more than 15 consecutive minutes at a time.
Correctly guess the number of bubbles in a bar of soap and we'll be right with you!
Come to think of it, HOAs and Republican legislatures are a lot alike in being small-minded pecksniffs who like to oppress others
Whoa, I take second place to no one in my hatred of Republican legislatures, but don't you think comparing them to HOA's is going a bit too far?
Fellow travelers in Misery Loves Company.
I liked it OK, although Sondheim isn't really my thing.
Thinking of the ridiculous square footage requirements imposed on adult shops in NY. One I went to (only there for the articles, I swear!) had a front and back section linked by a long bare corridor, expanding their floor space for as cheap as possible. Some took to selling regular magazines and even luggage. One in Rochester (very nice owners) sold vintage movies in addition to their usual VHS selection.
"When all else fails, deploy the (Dr. George) Tiller Method."
Hide access, hide truth, hide resistance.
And to add shit frosting to their crap cake, Florida then arrested ex-felons who only heard they had their rights restored and voted and touted it as “voter fraud!!1!”
Thus shifting the needle from "scummy" to "actively evil".
Could I operate a coat hanger dispensary without running afoul the constabulations?
Oof.
I refuse to take credit for going too far when stacked aside the current crop of fascist scum passing as humans for purposes of getting elected to offices whence they degrade humanity.
This has been the state of gender-affirming care for pretty much everywhere until about 10 years, & its only starting to unwind...
"...if you don’t like what voters demand, just make it illegal... If voters use their power to require something you don’t agree with, just take it away from them."
The crux. And, as with reproductive freedom, various gun laws, civil rights, and more, you have a Supreme Court in your arsenal who will invent a way to make whatever you've done in the states constitutional, national, and permanent.
The South Dakota legislature and governor routinely do this with voter-passed initiatives.
How do they get away with it? Does the state Supreme Court just look the other way?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA—oh… you’re serious.
Actually, the state supremes struck down one of the medical cannabis initiatives on a technicality, IIRC.
Was the line-spacing off? Line spacing was very important to the Founders, you know, all of the handwritten documents on which our government is based attest to this.
Technically the initiative addressed two topics, not just one, if you squinted and chose to read it that way. Of course, it had been drafted that way to remove ambiguity and the “hOw wiLL YoU pAy fOR iT???!?” challenge, so: Catch-22.
That's some catch, that Catch-22.
If I was young again, I'd sign up for the enforcer job. Just tell me who to go after, Mr. Sergeant at Arms-length!
I will be Sergeant-at-Armistice and if any disturbance arises I will remain studiously neutral, eating a sandwich.
Got extra? Enforcement can wait.
But it’s up to the Executive branch to enforce (or not) those SC rulings. If Dems won’t pack the Court, at least ignore them. “The Court is wrong on Dobbs and we’ll continue to act under Roe. PS fuck you.”
It struck me we don't get a Constitutiinal Crisis (tm) until 2 branches actually conflict. While the Joker Party is ready, the Democrats and what's left of the Republican Party seem reluctant to go to the mattresses just yet. Conventional wisdom is that they're feckless cowards, but I think their main concern is nobody knows what the fuck will happen if they do, and you may have noticed things aren't all that stable right now. The federal and state indictments are a last chance attempt to have the System deal with a direct threat to its legitimacy, if that fails a Constitutional Crisis will start looking pretty good compared to the alternatives.
Constitutional Crisis come struttin' down the street, lookin' good and knowin' it!
Thumbs up from everbody he meet, and the ladies goin' "MmmHMM!"
An' all guys be like "DAMN!" and Constitutional Crisis just soakin' in it.
I now envision Constitutional Crisis as a vintage “keep on truckin’” t-shirt.
C. C. Rider,
Oh, see what you have done
They also serve who only stand and [sorrowfully watch the government being dismantled].
That state Supreme Court bit was a big factor in Michigan voters being able to flip the state. By the 2022 election, the Court had thrown out every GOP effort to block new maps drawn by an independent re-districting commission. No-reason absentee ballots and same-day registration had passed by referendum in 2018, when Whitmer was elected governor, along with Dems in Secretary of State and AG offices. A series of sane Court actions, a hell of a lot of grassroots work, and Dobbs blowback led to the 2022 trifecta.
And now the Republicans can't hold a statewide convention without fistfights breaking out. Michigan is truly an inspiration to us all.
Between Republicans?
'Cause if so, better them punching each other than down.
Oh yes, absolutely. Guy who's completely fucking nuts throws a punch at a guy who's only slightly less nuts because Mr. slightly-less-nuts doesn't want to storm the Capitol that afternoon, some shit like that. They all deserve each other.
In Colorado, where the state party no longer has sufficient funds to pay for staff or even the light bill, the newly-elected chair has announced that his primary mission is to go after elected Republicans who aren't sufficiently nuts.
Is someone posting video of this to YouTube? If not, who the hell's sleeping on the job?
"...if voters use their power to require something you don’t agree with, just take it away from them."
it's called YOU'RE NOT IN A DEMOCRACY
Yes, this. So much hair-splitting from right-wingers over the basic question of "denied the right to vote." If you're allowed to carry out the physical act of voting, but then we don't, you know, actually USE your vote in determining who won, were you really denied in a way sufficient to trigger legal action? Gimme a fucking break, if the guy who lost doesn't leave office, you don't have democracy, you don't even have elections, really, all you have is a dumb show.
Conservatives develop a sudden, passionate interest in metaphysics and epistemology when they need a flimsy excuse to do what they want.
I'm still laughing at Trump's "heart of hearts" defense. Dude, maybe Elizabeth Holmes SINCERELY believed that Theranos really could do all the stuff they claimed with a single drop of blood. Sure, the people on her payroll told her the tests didn't work, but she just REALLY believed, so what can we do but throw up our hands and let her go?
“Heart of hearts”—You know they’re sincere when they lunge for the Shakespeare references. “Shakespeare, a very good author by the way, it’s being recognized more and more, wrote that great show, the Scottish one, McCheese it’s called, beautiful show, and that Lady McCheese, strong woman, a little pushy—little pushy—but she always supported her man, did what’s right, and that’s what we want, isn’t it fellas?”
“As you can plainly see, your honor, my client is innocent.”
Very well done, but it's kind of scary how we can just fall into Trump's voice at any time. The right-wingers are right about this much: He really does live rent-free in our heads.
I just realized Trump probably wouldn’t say “author.” Too fancy. I should’ve said “writer” instead.
and pure – you forgot pure.
Perfect! That soliloquy was PERFECT!
Like the average fascist knows epistemology from Episcopalian or metaphysics from P.E.
So long as it splits hairs or emits a cloud of squid ink, they don’t care what you call it.
Average fascist certainly doesn't know epidemiology, as witness (gestures wildly re COVID response)
Got another one! Grab me a straightjacket stat!
Related: Alabama GOP straight up admits they, and likely the Louisiana and Texas GOPs, can’t win a fair fight. Persuasion doesn’t even occur to them, the only answer is voter suppression.
https://aldailynews.com/alabama-republicans-frame-redistricting-case-as-threat-to-political-power/
“Let me scare you a little bit more; Texas has between five and ten congressmen that are Republicans that could shift the other way,” he continued. “How could we win the House back ever again if we’re talking about losing two in Louisiana, and losing five to ten in Texas? The answer’s simple: It’s never.”
Oh, be still, my beating heart.
Get me rewrite! "It's Now or Never" needs new lyric! "It's Never or Never!"
I'll take one of each!
Goppers be all "Never Say Never Again!"
We can propose laws our citizens actually want to live under -- but then who are we, if other people just live their lives without our interference? We are nobody.
Exactly! Like if you tell the truth, then maybe people are just agreeing with you because it's true, but if all you tell are lies, then you know when people agree it's because they fear you.
Excellent point. Being right proves zilch. You have to be very, very wrong if you want to use other people to prove you are more important than reality.
Sigh. Thanks, I guess, from Ohio for the dose of reality. We've been feeling pretty happy here about getting people to the polls to vote on an issue that, on its face, had nothing to do with abortion. Getting people to vote in November on the reproductive rights constitutional amendment should be easier. But, of course, the fight won't end there.
We have a history in Ohio of the Republican supermajority ignoring the state constitution and the Ohio Supreme Court. In 1997, the Ohio Supreme Court found that our system for funding public schools was unconstitutional, and it still hasn't been fixed. Instead, the assholes instituted a private school voucher system that they keep expanding. That's being challenged by public school advocates and is in the courts now.
But the better example is our constitutional amendment to end gerrymandering. We the voters were hoodwinked into amending the constitution in 2018 to create a redistricting commission that was supposed to change the way state and congressional districts are drawn. But the constitutional amendment we passed failed miserably because the redistricting commission is controlled by the people currently in power, the Republican supermajority, who created the maps they wanted and then ignored the Ohio Supreme Court when it found that the maps were unconstitutional. They gamed the system by waiting until elections were imminent and then getting a federal court order allowing them to use the maps that the state court had found were unconstitutional. We'll see a new constitutional amendment on the ballot soon that will try to fix the problem, but I have no doubt that the assholes will find ways to keep their power no matter what the constitution and the courts say.
And voters really don't want to vote for Democrats here, even though that would be the obvious way to protect reproductive rights. We had an opportunity to elect 3 pro-choice Dems to the Ohio Supreme Court last year, and the voters chose Republicans for all 3 seats. I've worked the polls in a Repubican county east of Cleveland and watched voter after voter simply grab a Republican slate card on the way in to vote the slate.
Wisconsin's Supreme Court races are officially nonpartisan, but that's not fooling anyone, everybody knows which one is which. But I still wonder if it doesn't offer just enough of a fig leaf for the loyal Republican voter who doesn't want her reproductive rights taken away. "Well, *technically* I didn't vote for a Democrat..."
The Republicans just changed the law in Ohio last year (for, I think, obvious reasons). All our judicial general elections for judges used to be nonpartisan. (We always had, and still have, partisan primaries.) But they changed it so that the general elections for Supreme Court and lower appellate court judges are partisan now. General elections for trial court judges remain nonpartisan.
I made the mistake of clicking through to the American Spectator article; the beginning was bad enough ("the Dems lie to the people! LIE! How dare they, that's OUR schtick!") but I got to the link to the story about "TRANS INDIVIDUALS SEEK EUTHANASIA" and I had to tap out before I started punching things.
"Ohio isn’t the only state in which efforts are being made to relieve voters of the burden of a million constitutional amendments to vote on every year."
Oh, is that the number? A MILLION? I know it must be true, because The American Spectator NEVER LIES.
Also, how goddamn helpful of them, to attempt to relieve the poor voters of this burden of deciding things for themselves. Life is full of such people.
Oh, were you just EXAGGERATING? What is this, are we having this argument in Middle School? Was A GAZILLION taken?
To be fair, if the legislature does not lege, it is up to their electors to seize the means of corrup- - sorry, let me try this again...
It is up to the citizenry to break a few kneeca - - no, that's not it...
When the lege don't lege
The voters pledge
To take it upon themselves
Lege better watch out
Or they'll lose in a rout
And get stuck back on their shelves
Y'all remember California Prop. 13? The Godfather of initiatives. Saved corporations (the sponsors of the thing) billions in property tax. That was the mid-70's. It was called Proposition 13 because it was the 13th attempt in the history of California to get an initiative on a state-wide ballots. It was in fact only the 7th to qualify. Since then, props have become a real industry unto themselves. As of last year, Californians have placed 170 initiatives on ballots.
All to say that even when there's a massive majority in each house and on the court, under which condition the lege should be crankin' out laws LIKE SAUSAGES the people still got the bit between their teefs. And boy/girl does it piss off a lot of Californians who simply want the lege to do its damn job. Because the average voter pamphlet is in fact encyclopedia-sized and indecipherable, and the ballots are too damn long!
Now you kids get offa my meadow!
By the by, it continues to gall me how conservatives insist Texas and Florida are bastions of pure unadulterated FREEDOM at the same time they're forging exciting new ideas in authoritarianism.
Well, it's freedom for somebody, I guess. Just like slavery offered unlimited freedom of action for the slaveowner.
"War is peace/freedom is slavery/ignorance is strength".
Hey, I thought the Republicans didn't put out a platform in 2020?
Well, at least they’re keeping things exciting?
The Guardian had one of those "Iowa voters stick by Trump" stories (AND GODDAMMIT WHY DO I KEEP READING THIS SHIT) but it had an interesting aside from the Chair of the Democratic Party in one rural Iowa county. Seems wind turbines have really taken off there, providing a nice, steady property tax income to the county and a pretty massive WINDfall to some farmers (hey, see what I did there?) Anyway, the Dem party chair said people just refused to give the Democrats any credit or to see the Republicans as an obstacle to their wealth and economic growth (she also blamed the national party for not devoting more resources to talking to rural voters.)
How it's related is that sometimes I think you just gotta take the W and move on. If Iowa farmers enthusiastically embrace wind and solar and consequently reduce the destructiveness of climate change, then I'll be happy with that, the Dems will just need to find their votes somewhere else.
Yea, but the Demoncrats were from the gubbermint and they were there to help, one of the most blood-chilling, horrifying, concepts in the world, often used to scare misbehaving children and to curdle innocent cows’ milk. Please, won’t someone think of the cows?
AND STOP CALLING IT SOY MILK!!!!!!!
Also solar installations near Box Elder in western South Dakota. Those are infinitely easier than turbines to remove when their useful life is over, and the rancher can get $800 per year in rent, whereas it’s only worth $30/year as grazing land.
Help, help, I'm bein' oppressed!
I'm still surprised that over 40% literally voted for their vote *not* to count.
It's interesting how closely the results track with the poll numbers on November's abortion-rights referendum (within a point, I think). So we now have a measure of how many principled people say, "Well, I'm against abortion, but I still don't like the idea of the legislature limiting our rights" and it's ZERO.
It would be interesting to see the Venn diagram overlap of those who think all abortion should be illegal, and those who believe in the existence of angels. Similarly, of those against abortion, and those in favor of the death penalty. Of course the ur-contradiction of them all is believing you revere life, whilie being a Republican-"The Party of Cruelty, Fascism, and Unlimited Guns." Then again, religion is a kind of socially-sanctioned insanity, so maybe that accounts for everything.
I would be interested in an actual statistical breakdown, but from what I'm hearing from people who knocked doors it really is people who are anti-abortion who voted yes on Issue 1.
Yep, Total War. Once you grasp that they truly, deeply, sincerely believe that tens of thousands of babies (babies! Cute little helpless babies with their little toes and fingers!) are MURDERED every day! RIPPED APART and flushed down the sewer! For NO REASON other than shallow convenience and cruelty! They are in a holy war with EVIL, with SATAN himself. Any action taken to fight this monstrous evil is just and righteous. Certainly there's a lot of mushy agreement that the sluts should just keep an aspirin between their knees and ixnay on the yevil, , but the engine driving this holy war Believe. They've given up any attempt to convince anyone of anything, mainly because every argument they've tried won't carry the water they need. They believe those cute little babies, those "potential humans", have immortal souls, but they know that dog won't hunt. Their "scientific" arguments are a joke, and their deep well of compassion for The Babies is bone dry once the little tykes pop their little heads out. So, brute force it is then. God will reward them. Hell, He's provided them with Trump who made that abomination Roe dissappear, what can't He do?
History teaches us religious wars are the worst wars, the insane logic of war is amplified by the insane logic of people who believe their fight is transcendental and they must prevail, no matter what generals babble about casualties and logistics. They will not go quietly.
"their deep well of compassion for The Babies is bone dry once the little tykes pop their little heads out."
A phrase I've heard them use is "innocent" human life, so yeah, once you've had any part of your body in a woman's vagina you are innocent no more.
My understanding is you can be washed clean of sin in the blood of Christ by choosing him as your one true and only personal savior and being born again in his love. So the forced-into-life unloved suffering poverty babies are really not your problem at that point.
You'd think that one borning would be enough, but NOOOOO.
Well, when you put it like that, perhaps a reasonable, moderate, proposed 8-1/2 month ban on all abortions is an appropriate way to, er, split the baby on this issue.