Tommy dumbfuck Tuberville doesn’t care about abortion. He just doesn’t want women in the military. He’s probably being paid by heritage foundation billionaires to do what he’s doing.
That would be an interesting research project. Nothing irks me more than than these draconian abortion laws than TT hold up of military promotions AND the R party members who have allowed it to go on this far!
Mike “micro” Johnson is a gift to democrats. He is a walking breathing advertising campaign on why you need to vote these theocratic fascists out of every fucking office period.
Dems need to get those mobile billboards out all over the country.
I'd title the campaign against Johnson as "Speaker of the Bigotry" and then proceed to list anything from his treasure trove of statements over the years.
The guy is an unabashed champion for a Christian theocratic government. He makes no bones about it. Article in the Times said the Dems were having a hard time targeting him. Why? He's EXACTLY the type to out ! He's easy ! He's that slick guy who appears normal but he represents what we all see around us, even in our neighbors and communities : a march away from democracy and toward religious autocracy.
He's that mild guy that you assume is sane, until his vitriol spews out and you realize given their propensity for projection (with the issues they obsess about being their own hobbies) he's a real dangerous man.
It's that person that sees others private issues as some sort of threat to them and their families. I don't get it. They characterize homosexual sex as "pornographic" (jerks) and they see any move away from the "traditional" conventions as some sort of threat to the fabric of society. 50% divorce rate, was the last I heard *years ago* and somehow someone who now thinks hey, I don't know if marriage is for me, is an immoral degenerate who is responsible for the ruination of society and the "holocaust" of "unborn children" -- look at he stats for abortions among married women.
These people are really losing it. They feel threatened by change.
They're also taking advantage of people who are not particularly religious but are concerned that there aren't or won't be enough White people left in the world. That's a big building block for their coalition.
I love how the definition, and inclusion of who is considered "white" has changed over the centuries. First the Irish and Italians weren't considered "white" (Italians being thought too swarthy) and the Irish are whiter than white (mostly) so go figure on that one. Then the eastern European immigrants like the Polish were next. Many of whom as soon as they were "accepted" happily crapped on the next immigrants. If the only accomplishment in your life is being born of a paler hue, that's sad comment on your life.
Yeah, it's primarily cultural, I think. Catholics were excluded for a long time. The purpose is always to maintain white supremacy and white privilege, so it's a matter of what you have to do to be White, I guess. It's probably defined more by who is not White, who must be kept inferior. That's always been people of African ancestry, but there may be more flexibility for others. The question is who they're willing to include in order to exclude Black people. Latin Americans are tricky, because on one hand they're worried about an 'invasion', but on the other hand Hispanics are often culturally conservative so in many ways they're a natural fit.
If we can't show America why it should dislike and fear Mike Johnson, we are in big big big trouble. It shouldn't be so hard to attack Christian fascists. Is the problem that historically America was a heavily Christian nation so it's like a third rail? We need the help of liberal and progressive Christian groups (surprisingly they exist). If we can't figure this out America is only going to realize how bad it is when they're in charge, and doing it the hard way is going to cause so much more damage.
Zach, I looked up this poll (below) yesterday after watching a broadcast that left my jaw dropped. There are aspects of this whole political/Christian Nationalists/abortion/homophobic movement that are so similar to the religious right movement in the 80’s, but there are parts that haven’t aligned logically for me. The poll below adds an adjunct dimension, especially among black church members. Since I’m not involved in church circles anymore, I was shocked by some of these poll numbers, but also am now curious if the Rs aren’t tapping into some of this through churches as well.
It's hard for me to give perspective on that because, to be blunt, I think they're all nuts. That said, I come from a Catholic family so I guess I could see how someone could have "background" Christianity in their head but it might not really affect their decisions much. It would be useful if we knew what those percentages were in other years, over a longer period of time. I mean, in my view those beliefs are so crazy that it's hard to even imagine a functioning society (well some would say we don't have that). But it may have always been like that in this country. For political purposes, what I'm interested in is how many people think it's okay to impose religious authoritarianism on others, who those people are, and whether it's changed.
To your point, the question is can Republicans expand their vote outside of White Americans? The one thing that ought to keep Democrats up at night is, what if everyone voted on the basis of their conservatism, regardless of race? White voters have already sorted out based on ideology, but nonwhite voters are still reliably Democratic regardless of what their own ideology is. If that were to change, Republicans could in theory make big gains.
I say 'in theory' though because then the question is why it hasn't already happened. Is it just a delayed realignment (what Republicans are hoping) or is race more powerful than ideology in America (what Democrats are hoping)? It's really important to ask, what, if any, are the differences in views between Black conservatives, Hispanic conservatives, and White conservatives? This poll doesn't really shed any light on that, but I suspect that social issues play differently from economic issues, for example (and an issue like abortion might be more likely to be viewed as an economic issue by those who are struggling). And then the question is, is racism essential to the current Republican coalition, or is there a version of it that is post-racist if not non-racist, which could pick up lots of nonwhite voters without losing any white voters? That's the needle Republicans want to thread.
Anecdotally the polling I've seen that shows Trump doing best against Biden shows almost all of Trump's gains coming from young voters and non-white voters, in other words Democrats' strongest groups (but also lower turnout groups). Biden holds his own with the higher turnout voters gained in 2020 and 2022. So it's mixed. If Trump really could make major gains among the young and among voters of color, it would be big big trouble. However, these voters are also polling mostly reluctant and unenthusiastic for Trump, and seem to be more just unwilling to vote for Biden again under any circumstances ('generic Democrat' or 'someone else' does much better). It doesn't really look like if they switch it would be because of increasing conservatism, but rather just disillusion with the status quo. So it doesn't seem to be a realignment, at least yet, but Republicans certainly are interested in pushing it that way, while if the pattern persists, Democrats may need Biden to drop out, lest a mistake becomes destiny.
TL;DR the Democratic coalition is more diverse and could therefore be harder to hold together. The flip side is that the Republican coalition is so uniform that it may be hard for them to reach out and expand. I suspect a lot depends on which issues are more salient, because if the choice is between Biden and Trump, there are going to be a lot of voters who don't want either one and are choosing only reluctantly.
It seems the group who thinks Jesus will come in their lifetime is bent on imposing their ideology on as many as possible… our current House Speaker included, even though he has recently tried to downplay that goal in his interviews.
OH, KY & VA elections will be telling tomorrow, as well as NJ.
Yeah. Johnson has said things along the lines of (I'm paraphrasing): The separation of church and state was to keep the state out of the church but not the church out of the state.
He's a very dangerous person, and he's second in line.
Yeah, everyone from the Christian nationalist faction is that way. They seem to have control of the party, and they long ago latched on to the strategy of using Trump to get their revolution. Trump's act for the most part is a sideshow, because it's all about personal grievances; he doesn't give a fuck about policy. These people do, and they have a vision, and they have a plan. I just hope the rest of the country can realize it before they take power and not after.
I have two daughters and a son. Oldest daughter is in college in Ithaca, NY. Say no more. We love it there! High School senior son is currently applying to schools in only liberal states, and my younger daughter will do the same. There is no way we support any ideology that subjugates women, and that hurts our LGBTQ+ beloved community. No. Way.
Yes. Of course we're all concerned about those who don't have the means to make those choices, which is for the most part the same problem with getting abortion care. Those are the ones who are the most subjugated.
More stuff that really pissed me off in today's column I had a bunch more, but I either lost em or killed em off.
Asshole of the year contender :
“Tommy Tuberville shouldn’t be allowed to hold up promotions, because he doesn’t think that the military should allow women to go and get abortions. That’s what it’s really all about. It’s about controlling women. It’s about controlling what women do. It’s about controlling their reproductive health.”
Cool😻
There’s a mobile billboard is driving around D.C. messaging the new Speaker’s anti-abortion record
Johnson has made it clear that, if given the chance, he would wholeheartedly approve of GOP bans on birth control like the morning after pill. What a piece of crap.
Excellent points as always Zach, but if you have this discussion with any of them, please ask this question: How you can possibly raise the number of children born and people in the world when these laws result in preventing women from getting ANY pregnancy care, hospital deliveries, and neonatal care AT ALL and we return to the PRIOR death rate of 1 to 2 out of every 3 women dying during delivery or miscarriages due to sepsis and other complications because they no longer have ANY specialists in their city or rural town? And who will raise all the orphaned siblings? Men?
Well they seem to think the 1800s were the golden age. I think a lot of conservatives are disingenuous of course, but I also think a lot of them don't think through their positions to their logical conclusions. There are people concerned about the birth rate, who I suspect also have a pride in European civilization and cultures which some of us might view as racist, and they're feeling an existential risk and anxiety. My point is, if you REALLY want more children, this is the way you do it, and if you don't want to do that, then children aren't really your priority after all. So many conservative responses to problems are simplistic, and often involve force. Honestly some progressive solutions to problems bear those same two qualities too, and those usually aren't good ideas either.
This will be a long one but the other day someone mentioned conservatives arguing that we need more workers as an excuse for anti-abortion policy, and I think it's worthwhile to have a response when that comes up.
I'm a liberal at heart, which is not the same as progressive/left nor the same as libertarian. I'd best describe it as we want to help people achieve their dreams without having to coerce anyone. So I think people should have the number of kids they want to have, no more and no less, and if that number ends up being below replacement level, freedom is still more important. Even though it is true that so long as the fertility rate is below replacement, the population will continue to decline, and would eventually cause the species to go extinct.
I think technology can, and will, help us get by with fewer workers, and, if we really wanted or needed more labor, there are millions of people who yearn to come to this country. Many of them are waiting at our southern border right now. But of course conservatives don't want THOSE people; what they really want are more White babies. (Even though they won't be old enough to work for many many years.)
But I also don't think, in a vacuum, that it's automatically bad to want a higher fertility rate. I think I've read that people tend not to have as many children as they want. That might be for economic reasons, for difficulty finding a suitable partner (which mostly means women having difficulty finding a suitable father), and for time, because people tend to start much later (a lot of which is probably down to the first two reasons). Liberals are supposed to help people get what they want, so what to say about people not having as many children as they want?
If we are talking about reproduction, males can father many many more offspring than females can, because women are limited by time, each pregnancy taking up nine months, while men's biological capacity is essentially unlimited. This means that women are unequivocally more valuable and more important to reproduction than men, and it's not even close.
It seems to me that if fertility is desirable, the first most obvious step is for society to value women at something closer to what we've just shown they are demonstrably worth. For a society to value children it has to value mothers and indeed needs to do much more to structure society around them. We'd need to help out families and especially help women raise their children (whether or not the father is present), because fundamentally we would need to reduce the opportunity cost to women of having children. The more a woman has to give up to have a child, the less likely she is to want to do it. Because we're not going back to when women were only mothers; women will not give up everything else in their lives.
What I'm talking about would be an absolute revolution in gender relations, because it would mean that women would have to be prioritized, always, and that men need to do their fucking share of the work, and then some. And even in this imaginary world in which men were not shit, women still incur great physical costs to bearing children. We would also have to prioritize health care that could minimize the damage to a woman's body from pregnancy and motherhood, if it were possible, and if it were not yet possible, it would need to be the top priority topic of medical research.
My point is that the correct response to anyone concerned about fertility rates is always the feminist one: treat women better. Especially when you want or need something from them, which only they can provide.
This of course would be anathema to conservatives. They want slave labor from women. They think that's the way it's supposed to be. They're pissed off that medical advances can give women control over their reproduction, which would put an end to the slave labor. Because they can't or won't imagine a social structure with women at the top, their choice is between a world with very few children, or a world in which women are slaves. They always opt for the latter one. And that is the vision that we are fighting against.
It is definitely about entitlement to slave labor. That and punishing out-of-wedlock births, of both white and people of color. They want to replace the welfare state with marriage and make it as punitive as possible for poor people to have children. Even if it means maternal, infant and child deaths.
I'm quite underwhelmed by the study showing women's applications to colleges in the slave states are only down 1%, but have to remember that most people don't get to go where they want and do what they want in life, and that's why we have to fight to free those states. I'm hoping that's the reason the decline is so small, and not that young women still don't think it's a big deal yet.
I think a lot of college decisions are heavily influenced by parents, who may be more conservative than the applicants themselves. The large red state schools are fundamentally sexist anyway. University life and identity revolve around football as their organizing cultural myth. Budgets reflect those male-centered priorities. I am speaking as an Auburn graduate. While I haven't seen any need to return in over 30 years, my brother attends almost every home and away game. It seems to work as a natural extension of his fundamentalist religious beliefs.
Ugh. I've lived my whole life in Wisconsin, and some of it's bad enough here, but I can only try to imagine how awful it is in the South. All we're asking, or at least all I'm asking, is that people have the right to opt out of that culture if they want to.
That's what she said. I'm hoping it's because it's not between going to college in those states vs. going where you'd like to go, but between going to college in those states and not going at all.
If they're out-of-state, they're usually on scholarship so not a lot of choice there. For in-state students, the tuition is a whole lot cheaper than out-of-state so that's understandable. I'm planning to go back to school next fall in Texas and I have to go here because of family. It's def not my first choice.
Yeah, it's why we say women are trapped in red states, and they can't just free themselves (since conservatives love to say, "If you don't like it you can get out.") I do wonder about faculty retention though.
That's a great point Zach. The more liberal-minded faculty who care about LGBTQ+ and women's rights will be leaving red states if they can find other positions, leaving openings for conservative hacks. This is by design.
Yeah. All their goals work together. They're trying to remake society. Of course they're saying the same thing about us. People don't like coercion. The question is whether there's any way out of this deadlock that's a way forward, not backward.
They say young people tend to think they're invincible, so I suppose they're thinking it won't happen to them or that they'll get around the law. I suppose that attitude and behavior are healthier than despair at living in a country where you have the status of slave.
Most people don’t think they need an abortion until they or a close contact needs one. And in-state tuition is a big deal. Plus college students generally have more money than those who can’t afford to go so many likely have (or think they have) the network and ability to travel or procure pills.
Dems did a lot of damage in the 90s talking about abortion being “rare” when it isn’t. It’s common. And we should embrace that.
We need more people willing to defend vocally the millions who get “elective” abortions -- not just the exceptions. Abortion is popular. 1/5 women agree.
All true. On one hand we'd like to see the number be dramatic, because we want the states passing these laws to suffer consequences. On the other hand, these people would rather keep 'young ladies' out of college and the workforce anyway, and back home where they belong. So young women need to keep giving a big 'fuck you' to that. These numbers could either represent resignation or fearlessness, so I'll go with the latter.
What's going on with Tumorville is something we've been waiting for with Republicans - anything to drive a wedge between the anti-abortion movement and other factions of the party. I don't know how much it will amount to, but I'll take it for now. I also suspect that, regardless of their politics, most everyone in Washington thinks Tuberville is a real asshole. (He was a football coach, after all.)
Yeah. It's why ability to get along with people still matters. Tuberville and Mike Johnson have very similar politics, but the speaker is much more dangerous because by all accounts people genuinely like him. It's how someone with that issue profile gets elected unanimously, while Tuberville is out on an island. That and the differences between the House and the Senate.
I had to look it up as it was unclear from the story, but an amendment in Nebraska only needs a majority of votes cast in the election to pass (so undervotes do count against it but I suspect they'd be pretty rare on an abortion measure). I'm guessing Sen. Conrad was talking about 60% because she wants a cushion? Not sure what the strategy is to her comments (if there is one) but I suppose anything that makes it look like the measure is coming organically from the people and not from the Democratic party, in a state as red as Nebraska, is a good thing.
But not consensual sex, the Christianists hate that! That must be punished! Sick people that they are. Stop peeping in people's bedrooms. Oddly, there are a lot of Republican/trumpers in the alternative lifestyles. They are the selfish swingers who won't wear a condom, like the ones who caused an STD wave in "The republican stronghold "The Villages" here in Florida.
I just feel sorry for the poor centrists, and Democratic party voters who got sucked into buying there, they usually sell out within a year, though. As did my friends who told me about all this.
I just read some commentary from a California guy who opined that seniors were moving to hot locals purely for the temperature. That in part drove the senior influx to Arizona, along with clean low pollen air. Look at the air quality today. Always a gamble 🎰
That's why it is always on their mind, and out of their mouth. I try to not think about it, myself. They obsess about it, yet never protect the victims.
Thank you again for continuing to highlight how these fascist controlled states are also restricting gender affirming health care along with their laws against the bodily autonomy of people designated female at birth.
I wish everyone could see that! The TERFs trolling as "feminists" make me so irate. I thought feminism is about equality, not being superior so you can hurt others.
And despite Republicans’ best attempts to claim that their 15-week ban is some sort of reasonable compromise, we know 15 weeks is just a starting point.
My fucking Jesus or quetzylcotyl, or whoever the fuck. 15 weeks is a totally arbitrary number. Why not go with 3.14? That way we will get discounts on pie👍 Stupid shits. You shouldn't get to decide. Who made you lord over women??? What kinda world 🌎 🤔 😳 😕 😪
My favorite one ever was my husband's best friend's name is Marijan, autocorrect changed it to "marijuana" which he didn't catch...until after he hit send.
I'm feeling talkative today. 'Colleges in anti-abortion states see drop in female applicants' made me wonder if anything 🤔 Good was going on in anti abortion states.
Jessica & Grace, thanks for all you do!
Tommy dumbfuck Tuberville doesn’t care about abortion. He just doesn’t want women in the military. He’s probably being paid by heritage foundation billionaires to do what he’s doing.
That would be an interesting research project. Nothing irks me more than than these draconian abortion laws than TT hold up of military promotions AND the R party members who have allowed it to go on this far!
Mike “micro” Johnson is a gift to democrats. He is a walking breathing advertising campaign on why you need to vote these theocratic fascists out of every fucking office period.
They know they fucked up
Dems need to get those mobile billboards out all over the country.
I'd title the campaign against Johnson as "Speaker of the Bigotry" and then proceed to list anything from his treasure trove of statements over the years.
The guy is an unabashed champion for a Christian theocratic government. He makes no bones about it. Article in the Times said the Dems were having a hard time targeting him. Why? He's EXACTLY the type to out ! He's easy ! He's that slick guy who appears normal but he represents what we all see around us, even in our neighbors and communities : a march away from democracy and toward religious autocracy.
He's that mild guy that you assume is sane, until his vitriol spews out and you realize given their propensity for projection (with the issues they obsess about being their own hobbies) he's a real dangerous man.
'
It's that person that sees others private issues as some sort of threat to them and their families. I don't get it. They characterize homosexual sex as "pornographic" (jerks) and they see any move away from the "traditional" conventions as some sort of threat to the fabric of society. 50% divorce rate, was the last I heard *years ago* and somehow someone who now thinks hey, I don't know if marriage is for me, is an immoral degenerate who is responsible for the ruination of society and the "holocaust" of "unborn children" -- look at he stats for abortions among married women.
These people are really losing it. They feel threatened by change.
Yes, and they are determined to force us to live by their twisted values.
They're also taking advantage of people who are not particularly religious but are concerned that there aren't or won't be enough White people left in the world. That's a big building block for their coalition.
I love how the definition, and inclusion of who is considered "white" has changed over the centuries. First the Irish and Italians weren't considered "white" (Italians being thought too swarthy) and the Irish are whiter than white (mostly) so go figure on that one. Then the eastern European immigrants like the Polish were next. Many of whom as soon as they were "accepted" happily crapped on the next immigrants. If the only accomplishment in your life is being born of a paler hue, that's sad comment on your life.
Yeah, it's primarily cultural, I think. Catholics were excluded for a long time. The purpose is always to maintain white supremacy and white privilege, so it's a matter of what you have to do to be White, I guess. It's probably defined more by who is not White, who must be kept inferior. That's always been people of African ancestry, but there may be more flexibility for others. The question is who they're willing to include in order to exclude Black people. Latin Americans are tricky, because on one hand they're worried about an 'invasion', but on the other hand Hispanics are often culturally conservative so in many ways they're a natural fit.
I had forgotten the religion element thank you for reminding me. You are spot on in your analysis.
If we can't show America why it should dislike and fear Mike Johnson, we are in big big big trouble. It shouldn't be so hard to attack Christian fascists. Is the problem that historically America was a heavily Christian nation so it's like a third rail? We need the help of liberal and progressive Christian groups (surprisingly they exist). If we can't figure this out America is only going to realize how bad it is when they're in charge, and doing it the hard way is going to cause so much more damage.
Zach, I looked up this poll (below) yesterday after watching a broadcast that left my jaw dropped. There are aspects of this whole political/Christian Nationalists/abortion/homophobic movement that are so similar to the religious right movement in the 80’s, but there are parts that haven’t aligned logically for me. The poll below adds an adjunct dimension, especially among black church members. Since I’m not involved in church circles anymore, I was shocked by some of these poll numbers, but also am now curious if the Rs aren’t tapping into some of this through churches as well.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/12/08/about-four-in-ten-u-s-adults-believe-humanity-is-living-in-the-end-times/
It's hard for me to give perspective on that because, to be blunt, I think they're all nuts. That said, I come from a Catholic family so I guess I could see how someone could have "background" Christianity in their head but it might not really affect their decisions much. It would be useful if we knew what those percentages were in other years, over a longer period of time. I mean, in my view those beliefs are so crazy that it's hard to even imagine a functioning society (well some would say we don't have that). But it may have always been like that in this country. For political purposes, what I'm interested in is how many people think it's okay to impose religious authoritarianism on others, who those people are, and whether it's changed.
To your point, the question is can Republicans expand their vote outside of White Americans? The one thing that ought to keep Democrats up at night is, what if everyone voted on the basis of their conservatism, regardless of race? White voters have already sorted out based on ideology, but nonwhite voters are still reliably Democratic regardless of what their own ideology is. If that were to change, Republicans could in theory make big gains.
I say 'in theory' though because then the question is why it hasn't already happened. Is it just a delayed realignment (what Republicans are hoping) or is race more powerful than ideology in America (what Democrats are hoping)? It's really important to ask, what, if any, are the differences in views between Black conservatives, Hispanic conservatives, and White conservatives? This poll doesn't really shed any light on that, but I suspect that social issues play differently from economic issues, for example (and an issue like abortion might be more likely to be viewed as an economic issue by those who are struggling). And then the question is, is racism essential to the current Republican coalition, or is there a version of it that is post-racist if not non-racist, which could pick up lots of nonwhite voters without losing any white voters? That's the needle Republicans want to thread.
Anecdotally the polling I've seen that shows Trump doing best against Biden shows almost all of Trump's gains coming from young voters and non-white voters, in other words Democrats' strongest groups (but also lower turnout groups). Biden holds his own with the higher turnout voters gained in 2020 and 2022. So it's mixed. If Trump really could make major gains among the young and among voters of color, it would be big big trouble. However, these voters are also polling mostly reluctant and unenthusiastic for Trump, and seem to be more just unwilling to vote for Biden again under any circumstances ('generic Democrat' or 'someone else' does much better). It doesn't really look like if they switch it would be because of increasing conservatism, but rather just disillusion with the status quo. So it doesn't seem to be a realignment, at least yet, but Republicans certainly are interested in pushing it that way, while if the pattern persists, Democrats may need Biden to drop out, lest a mistake becomes destiny.
TL;DR the Democratic coalition is more diverse and could therefore be harder to hold together. The flip side is that the Republican coalition is so uniform that it may be hard for them to reach out and expand. I suspect a lot depends on which issues are more salient, because if the choice is between Biden and Trump, there are going to be a lot of voters who don't want either one and are choosing only reluctantly.
It seems the group who thinks Jesus will come in their lifetime is bent on imposing their ideology on as many as possible… our current House Speaker included, even though he has recently tried to downplay that goal in his interviews.
OH, KY & VA elections will be telling tomorrow, as well as NJ.
Btw, I agree with you.
Yeah. Johnson has said things along the lines of (I'm paraphrasing): The separation of church and state was to keep the state out of the church but not the church out of the state.
He's a very dangerous person, and he's second in line.
Yeah, everyone from the Christian nationalist faction is that way. They seem to have control of the party, and they long ago latched on to the strategy of using Trump to get their revolution. Trump's act for the most part is a sideshow, because it's all about personal grievances; he doesn't give a fuck about policy. These people do, and they have a vision, and they have a plan. I just hope the rest of the country can realize it before they take power and not after.
Too many of our fellow countrymen don't seem inclined to analyze reality as it unfolds these Theocrats have shown us who they are...repeatedly.
I have two daughters and a son. Oldest daughter is in college in Ithaca, NY. Say no more. We love it there! High School senior son is currently applying to schools in only liberal states, and my younger daughter will do the same. There is no way we support any ideology that subjugates women, and that hurts our LGBTQ+ beloved community. No. Way.
Yes. Of course we're all concerned about those who don't have the means to make those choices, which is for the most part the same problem with getting abortion care. Those are the ones who are the most subjugated.
But isn’t turning women away from education and into the kitchens, trapped in undissolvable marriages and forced births exactly what they want?
Yes, the "Handmaid's Tale" is a "how to" guide, for them.
More stuff that really pissed me off in today's column I had a bunch more, but I either lost em or killed em off.
Asshole of the year contender :
“Tommy Tuberville shouldn’t be allowed to hold up promotions, because he doesn’t think that the military should allow women to go and get abortions. That’s what it’s really all about. It’s about controlling women. It’s about controlling what women do. It’s about controlling their reproductive health.”
Cool😻
There’s a mobile billboard is driving around D.C. messaging the new Speaker’s anti-abortion record
Johnson has made it clear that, if given the chance, he would wholeheartedly approve of GOP bans on birth control like the morning after pill. What a piece of crap.
Excellent points as always Zach, but if you have this discussion with any of them, please ask this question: How you can possibly raise the number of children born and people in the world when these laws result in preventing women from getting ANY pregnancy care, hospital deliveries, and neonatal care AT ALL and we return to the PRIOR death rate of 1 to 2 out of every 3 women dying during delivery or miscarriages due to sepsis and other complications because they no longer have ANY specialists in their city or rural town? And who will raise all the orphaned siblings? Men?
They'll just sputter that the woman should have "kept her legs closed." As if rape and other realities don't exist in the their (delusional) world.
Actually the guy should have held his junk and spunk in.
Yes, but they are not acquainted with any kind of reality, they'll always blame us.
Well they seem to think the 1800s were the golden age. I think a lot of conservatives are disingenuous of course, but I also think a lot of them don't think through their positions to their logical conclusions. There are people concerned about the birth rate, who I suspect also have a pride in European civilization and cultures which some of us might view as racist, and they're feeling an existential risk and anxiety. My point is, if you REALLY want more children, this is the way you do it, and if you don't want to do that, then children aren't really your priority after all. So many conservative responses to problems are simplistic, and often involve force. Honestly some progressive solutions to problems bear those same two qualities too, and those usually aren't good ideas either.
We are in the golden age 🤴. The retrievers rule on utube. They recently had a reunion in England. Hundreds attended. Awsome and adorable.
This will be a long one but the other day someone mentioned conservatives arguing that we need more workers as an excuse for anti-abortion policy, and I think it's worthwhile to have a response when that comes up.
I'm a liberal at heart, which is not the same as progressive/left nor the same as libertarian. I'd best describe it as we want to help people achieve their dreams without having to coerce anyone. So I think people should have the number of kids they want to have, no more and no less, and if that number ends up being below replacement level, freedom is still more important. Even though it is true that so long as the fertility rate is below replacement, the population will continue to decline, and would eventually cause the species to go extinct.
I think technology can, and will, help us get by with fewer workers, and, if we really wanted or needed more labor, there are millions of people who yearn to come to this country. Many of them are waiting at our southern border right now. But of course conservatives don't want THOSE people; what they really want are more White babies. (Even though they won't be old enough to work for many many years.)
But I also don't think, in a vacuum, that it's automatically bad to want a higher fertility rate. I think I've read that people tend not to have as many children as they want. That might be for economic reasons, for difficulty finding a suitable partner (which mostly means women having difficulty finding a suitable father), and for time, because people tend to start much later (a lot of which is probably down to the first two reasons). Liberals are supposed to help people get what they want, so what to say about people not having as many children as they want?
If we are talking about reproduction, males can father many many more offspring than females can, because women are limited by time, each pregnancy taking up nine months, while men's biological capacity is essentially unlimited. This means that women are unequivocally more valuable and more important to reproduction than men, and it's not even close.
It seems to me that if fertility is desirable, the first most obvious step is for society to value women at something closer to what we've just shown they are demonstrably worth. For a society to value children it has to value mothers and indeed needs to do much more to structure society around them. We'd need to help out families and especially help women raise their children (whether or not the father is present), because fundamentally we would need to reduce the opportunity cost to women of having children. The more a woman has to give up to have a child, the less likely she is to want to do it. Because we're not going back to when women were only mothers; women will not give up everything else in their lives.
What I'm talking about would be an absolute revolution in gender relations, because it would mean that women would have to be prioritized, always, and that men need to do their fucking share of the work, and then some. And even in this imaginary world in which men were not shit, women still incur great physical costs to bearing children. We would also have to prioritize health care that could minimize the damage to a woman's body from pregnancy and motherhood, if it were possible, and if it were not yet possible, it would need to be the top priority topic of medical research.
My point is that the correct response to anyone concerned about fertility rates is always the feminist one: treat women better. Especially when you want or need something from them, which only they can provide.
This of course would be anathema to conservatives. They want slave labor from women. They think that's the way it's supposed to be. They're pissed off that medical advances can give women control over their reproduction, which would put an end to the slave labor. Because they can't or won't imagine a social structure with women at the top, their choice is between a world with very few children, or a world in which women are slaves. They always opt for the latter one. And that is the vision that we are fighting against.
It is definitely about entitlement to slave labor. That and punishing out-of-wedlock births, of both white and people of color. They want to replace the welfare state with marriage and make it as punitive as possible for poor people to have children. Even if it means maternal, infant and child deaths.
I'm quite underwhelmed by the study showing women's applications to colleges in the slave states are only down 1%, but have to remember that most people don't get to go where they want and do what they want in life, and that's why we have to fight to free those states. I'm hoping that's the reason the decline is so small, and not that young women still don't think it's a big deal yet.
I think a lot of college decisions are heavily influenced by parents, who may be more conservative than the applicants themselves. The large red state schools are fundamentally sexist anyway. University life and identity revolve around football as their organizing cultural myth. Budgets reflect those male-centered priorities. I am speaking as an Auburn graduate. While I haven't seen any need to return in over 30 years, my brother attends almost every home and away game. It seems to work as a natural extension of his fundamentalist religious beliefs.
Ugh. I've lived my whole life in Wisconsin, and some of it's bad enough here, but I can only try to imagine how awful it is in the South. All we're asking, or at least all I'm asking, is that people have the right to opt out of that culture if they want to.
Only -1% ?
That's what she said. I'm hoping it's because it's not between going to college in those states vs. going where you'd like to go, but between going to college in those states and not going at all.
If they're out-of-state, they're usually on scholarship so not a lot of choice there. For in-state students, the tuition is a whole lot cheaper than out-of-state so that's understandable. I'm planning to go back to school next fall in Texas and I have to go here because of family. It's def not my first choice.
Yeah, it's why we say women are trapped in red states, and they can't just free themselves (since conservatives love to say, "If you don't like it you can get out.") I do wonder about faculty retention though.
That's a great point Zach. The more liberal-minded faculty who care about LGBTQ+ and women's rights will be leaving red states if they can find other positions, leaving openings for conservative hacks. This is by design.
Yeah. All their goals work together. They're trying to remake society. Of course they're saying the same thing about us. People don't like coercion. The question is whether there's any way out of this deadlock that's a way forward, not backward.
Why go only to have to drop out to have raise a kid? Ugh
They say young people tend to think they're invincible, so I suppose they're thinking it won't happen to them or that they'll get around the law. I suppose that attitude and behavior are healthier than despair at living in a country where you have the status of slave.
Most people don’t think they need an abortion until they or a close contact needs one. And in-state tuition is a big deal. Plus college students generally have more money than those who can’t afford to go so many likely have (or think they have) the network and ability to travel or procure pills.
Dems did a lot of damage in the 90s talking about abortion being “rare” when it isn’t. It’s common. And we should embrace that.
We need more people willing to defend vocally the millions who get “elective” abortions -- not just the exceptions. Abortion is popular. 1/5 women agree.
We need more data. For example, are they 2 or 4 year 🤔. Are they free to residents? Duhh
All true. On one hand we'd like to see the number be dramatic, because we want the states passing these laws to suffer consequences. On the other hand, these people would rather keep 'young ladies' out of college and the workforce anyway, and back home where they belong. So young women need to keep giving a big 'fuck you' to that. These numbers could either represent resignation or fearlessness, so I'll go with the latter.
What's going on with Tumorville is something we've been waiting for with Republicans - anything to drive a wedge between the anti-abortion movement and other factions of the party. I don't know how much it will amount to, but I'll take it for now. I also suspect that, regardless of their politics, most everyone in Washington thinks Tuberville is a real asshole. (He was a football coach, after all.)
He was elected by the same state who had a hard time not voting for a pedophile (Roy Moore)
and had to be shamed into voting for the Senate candidate that finally got justice against the Klan.
He doesn’t seem to have a lot of allies right now 🤷♀️
He puts the pig in pigskin.
Yeah. It's why ability to get along with people still matters. Tuberville and Mike Johnson have very similar politics, but the speaker is much more dangerous because by all accounts people genuinely like him. It's how someone with that issue profile gets elected unanimously, while Tuberville is out on an island. That and the differences between the House and the Senate.
He's like the snake 🐍 in the garden of eden.
I had to look it up as it was unclear from the story, but an amendment in Nebraska only needs a majority of votes cast in the election to pass (so undervotes do count against it but I suspect they'd be pretty rare on an abortion measure). I'm guessing Sen. Conrad was talking about 60% because she wants a cushion? Not sure what the strategy is to her comments (if there is one) but I suppose anything that makes it look like the measure is coming organically from the people and not from the Democratic party, in a state as red as Nebraska, is a good thing.
"Millennial Culture Loves Abortion Because It’s Obsessed With Sex and Shuns Marriage"
Clearly it's Christians who are the ones obsessed with sex and what people are doing in their bedrooms. It's always projection with these people.
But not consensual sex, the Christianists hate that! That must be punished! Sick people that they are. Stop peeping in people's bedrooms. Oddly, there are a lot of Republican/trumpers in the alternative lifestyles. They are the selfish swingers who won't wear a condom, like the ones who caused an STD wave in "The republican stronghold "The Villages" here in Florida.
Say what you want about the villages, but they are delicious 😋 people according to the gators.
I just feel sorry for the poor centrists, and Democratic party voters who got sucked into buying there, they usually sell out within a year, though. As did my friends who told me about all this.
I just read some commentary from a California guy who opined that seniors were moving to hot locals purely for the temperature. That in part drove the senior influx to Arizona, along with clean low pollen air. Look at the air quality today. Always a gamble 🎰
Every accusation is a confession
ALWAYS projection. Always.
They're usually the pedophiles too.
That's why it is always on their mind, and out of their mouth. I try to not think about it, myself. They obsess about it, yet never protect the victims.
True.
Thank you again for continuing to highlight how these fascist controlled states are also restricting gender affirming health care along with their laws against the bodily autonomy of people designated female at birth.
Of course! To me, these are inextricable issues.
I wish everyone could see that! The TERFs trolling as "feminists" make me so irate. I thought feminism is about equality, not being superior so you can hurt others.
Holy shit 💩!!!
And despite Republicans’ best attempts to claim that their 15-week ban is some sort of reasonable compromise, we know 15 weeks is just a starting point.
My fucking Jesus or quetzylcotyl, or whoever the fuck. 15 weeks is a totally arbitrary number. Why not go with 3.14? That way we will get discounts on pie👍 Stupid shits. You shouldn't get to decide. Who made you lord over women??? What kinda world 🌎 🤔 😳 😕 😪
You really like Pi that much?
My mathematical faves are mobile strips and Mandelbrots.
Stupid autocratic. Should be mobius.
Autocorrect...sheesh
My favorite one ever was my husband's best friend's name is Marijan, autocorrect changed it to "marijuana" which he didn't catch...until after he hit send.
My favorite is a Google search. I asked if pennies were getting thinner. Maybe 20 results in, it started showing results for penis.
I'm feeling talkative today. 'Colleges in anti-abortion states see drop in female applicants' made me wonder if anything 🤔 Good was going on in anti abortion states.