It’s no real surprise that pro-lifers discussing abortion didn’t want to talk about real-world consequences of forced birth. They’d rather show pictures like this, along with their bogus hotlines and crisis pregnancy centers that dispense lies to women. They were happy to have all the good press that comes with holding a “principled position” about the abstract women who need to “choose life” after a period of reflection and prayer, and go on to have a cute little baby.
It wasn’t hard for people who’ve had real experience in the many different ways that pregnancy can go wrong to imagine hospital lawyers making life-and-death decisions about whether women with anacephalic babies should be allowed abortions. Some legislators who happily wanted to punish sluts for sex are now in tears because they never imagined that women denied abortions would lose their uterus.
Well, now all of them know, and ignorance of the death and suffering caused by abortion bans is common knowledge. We’re not sitting around a table having a disinterested, intellectual conversation about fetal viability and maternal responsibility. Instead, we’re talking about the blood, pus, pain and death that can accompany a failed pregnancy.
I learned about the sometimes awful consequences of pregnancy from my old man, who delivered 3,000 babies and didn’t lose a mother. Part of that was because he didn’t have a hospital attorney looking over his shoulder deciding whether a woman who is bleeding profusely from a failed miscarriage needed an emergency D&C. We’re in a situation now where women in hospitals far better equipped than his, with doctors far more skilled, are standing around waiting for attorneys to decide whether the woman is close enough to death to warrant intervention.
Those physician’s jobs are complex, but the Democrats’ job is far more simple: we just need to hang all of this around the neck of every god damned Republican who got us in this situation.
Baud
We should have more billboards.
Immanentize
trollhattan
Read that as “ABORTION FOREVER” which gives it an entirely different vibe.
eversor
Back in the HIV days of the 90s there were die in protests in Churches along with other tactics. The point was making the voters and groups that supported the politicians uncomfortable. You can’t convince the people at the top. But you can make the people at bottom uncomfortable being remotely associated with the topic.
You won’t get much protesting at Alito’s house. But bringing the carnage straight to his Church and where he eats after work and forcing everyone associated with him and those organizations to be very uncomfortable will start to move things.
PPCLI
Correcting a couple of typos:
Some legislators who happily wanted to punish sluts for sex are now
infeigning tears because they never imagined thatwomen denied abortions would lose their uterus.the bills they had been slavering to pass for decades would turn out to be such massive vote losers, to the point where even some safe Republican seats would start looking shaky.StringOnAStick
The local alternative news here broke the story that one of the local Shell gas stations has decided to use sales to support the bogus “alternative pregnancy care” storefronts in this city; word is spreading fast and our household will ever buy gas there again.
The Moar You Know
ABORTION IS FOREVER
No chance of getting woke up at 3am by your rapist’s baby!
1-800-THOTSNPRAYERS
I’ve hated these people for 40+ years now. Guess I’m not gonna go to heaven or some bullshit like that.
Kropacetic
You can’t “choose life” if you don’t have a choice. If you affirmatively vote against choice, you’re choosing death, poverty, and immiseration.
pat
Can we change “pro-life” to “forced birth?”
“Pro-lifers” are forced birth fanatics.
Kropacetic
I bet your odds are better than the median forced birther.
cain
When you live in a world of alternative facts – the reality coming down upon them is brutal indeed. But so much more brutal for the women who are suffering and dying.
ETA – the more things come out with all the suffering of women, the worse it’s going to be for a generation that is already more pro-women than previous ones.
Cacti
We have a word for animals that don’t get to control their own fertility:
Livestock.
Republicans believe women are livestock. Democrats don’t.
And yes, every damn one of them should be made to own this barbaric view.
Elizabelle
@PPCLI:
Could we lose this terminology in arguments here? I find it really offensive, even though I know you guys (and it is frequently male commenters) are using it in an ironic and even somewhat sympathetic sense.
Replace sluts with the N-word, and see how that sounds.
I am fine with journalists being called sluts, if they are. I wince at having it applied to half of humankind.
wegners shoppers club member mistermix
@Elizabelle:
How is that determined?
Kropacetic
Reality hurt my feeeeelings ::sob:: it’s like it doesn’t even care… 😭
different-church-lady
“The tragedy! A woman without a uterus is useless to me and society! [SOB!]”
Kropacetic
I usually ask “did I get his name first?”
252man
@wegners shoppers club member mistermix: Rupert Murdoch signs their paycheck.
Betty Cracker
Yep. And hanging it around the Republican Party’s neck is easier to do now that we’ve gotten rid of almost all of the anti-choice Dems.
raven
We’re watching “Five Days at Memorial” about the hospital in New Orleans during Katrina. Insane what the doctors and nurses had to decide.
Kelly
My son and daughter in law were going for their second when an early doctor visit revealed abnormalities that would have resulted in a short painful life. They terminated the pregnancy and went on to have two healthy boys. Told her wingnut family it was a miscarriage. Swore us to secrecy
kalakal
@cain:
Good. The harder it hits them the better. These fanatical bigots and their cynical enablers should be reviled by society at large. I hope the pain and misery they are gleefully inflicting on others becomes their lot
Calouste
Can someone tape over “abortions” on that sign with “school shootings “?
Elizabelle
@cain:
OT, but I am thinking of the big Ohio murder case that begins late this month. Wherein the Wagner family voted as a whole to murder 8 members of the Rhoden family (in their beds), to obtain custody of a 2-year old child (that the Rhoden daughter had conceived when she was 15 years old with a Wagner son who was 20 at the time — Jake Wagner faces charges for having sex with a minor as well as 8 counts of murder; he’s not on trial; he’s already confessed).
Because: the Wagners were home-schooled, isolated, engaged in some criminal pursuits in addition to being truck drivers, and the whole family is the epitome of clannishness. Two women who’d been involved with the sons fled for their lives, in one case (if memory serves) leaving children behind.
It will be a titillating trial, and I wonder if some Ohio voters will think “this is what happens when home-schooling and isolation from the larger culture and taking the law into your own hands are taken to an unprecedented degree.”
It could move some votes. The Wagners eschewed the courts in favor of firearms with homemade silencers.
Both families are white. Hillbilly Elegy territory.
Kropacetic
That would be inelegant and ungrammatical. I propose a graffiti artist and additionally covering “is” with “are.”
Elizabelle
@wegners shoppers club member mistermix:
For me, it’s when you twist the truth. The both siders. The fatuous types who won’t follow a logical progression of where the facts are leading because. … it’s politically or culturally highly inconvenient. Must throw up squid ink.
The stenographers, who repeat ridiculous rhetoric without providing any context or fact-checking it. He said, she said, presented as two valid statements.
Those sluts. Can be male or female.
Can be applied to columnists too. As in David Brooks. Kathleen Parker. The dishonest, almost always partisan (OK, Republican-enabling) types who are trying to hide behind a veil of “objectivity.”
Incidentally, did you see where Major Major described Andrew Yang as a “sentient David Brooks column” last night? That was inspired.
Those sluts.
Not women. As a whole.
brantl
It is funny how these assholes can somehow go on with “We couldn’t have forseen that, when they write in that there are no exclusionary conditions that would allow abortion, when they explicitly wrote the law that way.
bbleh
Well, now all of them know, and ignorance of the death and suffering caused by abortion bans is common knowledge.
They may “know” in some corner of their mind accessible via generous doses of truth serum, but they are so invested in not acknowledging it, not understanding it, not believing it, that I would expect many of them to deny it and consider themselves “truthful” in doing so.
They’ve long made it clear, in word and deed, that they don’t care about pregnant women, infants, or children. The same states — run by the same legislatures — that are busy outlawing access to abortion also routinely underfund maternal and child care, nutrition programs, and other economic assistance to low-income families. And that indifference extends to real-life fetuses, in all their complexity, and to the women who carry them.
They and their followers are fetus-fetishists. They have a fuzzy, romanticized, emotion-laden, and not uncommonly religiostic, image of “the baby.” It is beautiful and pure, even holy, perfect in every way, and can be nothing but a blessing, even if the (morally compromised) mother doesn’t realize it.
They’ll never give up on that image, no matter how much reality is put in front of their faces. They’re zealots. They’re unreachable. There is no point to trying to convince them; the point can only be to defeat them.
Eljai
@raven: I haven’t seen it yet. I remember the horrific news stories at the time. Do you recommend? It sounds like the makers of this production are respectful of the subject matter. I’d like to see it, even though I know it’s going to be difficult to watch.
ian
@Elizabelle: That sounds straight out of the 6th century. Minus the technology used to do the killing, which seems quite modern.
Elizabelle
@ian: Yes. The Wagners were skilled at making homemade silencers. Got to hand it to them.
They spared a newborn, a baby, and a toddler. Rescuers found them unhurt, in bed with their dead mothers. One was trying to nurse at the dead mother’s breast.
It will be a trial.
But: think of how isolated the Wagners were. By parents’ design.
Homeschooling prevents local authorities from realizing what kinds of pathologies are present or developing in local families. Public schools are protective of children’s opportunities, in many ways.
Thinking of the Hart family there. (Murder suicide a few years back; lesbian couple who pulled the kids out of school to hide abuse at home. White parents with adopted children of color.)
Anyhoo …
Another Scott
@bbleh: In the late 1990s I had hoped that when Jesus didn’t “return” in 2000-2001 that more people would come to discount stories told on Sunday mornings that get them riled up to hate their neighbors. (“Jesus didn’t return like they said! What else are they wrong about??!”)
We don’t hear much about Jesus returning any more (of course the Rapture stuff is still out there, but less common I think), but the othering and trumped up (heh) hate of our fellow humans hasn’t really changed.
Kinda disappointing, but not really surprising. Old
griftshabits die hard.Cheers,
Scott.
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: I dunno. If you think “slut” is equivalent to the n-word on the offensiveness scale, it seems like you shouldn’t use it. Period. Even about Chris Cillizza. I’m not trying to pick on you — just trying to work it out logically. Acceptable language evolves all the time, so I try to keep up as best I can.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: I don’t think it’s equivalent, but I think it’s heading there, and that the argument could be better made with a different word or phrase.
And yeah. You remind me. Chris Cilizza is another of the “sluts.”
Whereas Dana Milbank is not. He wised up.
p.a.
I’ve never gotten more than a sour milk face* from the Christofascists when I point out that their ‘innocent little baby’ schtick contradicts their own vile theology. THEIR god condemns us from conception because of something that happened (according to them) 6,000- 10,000 years ago.
It’s useless verbal sparring, but at least it doesn’t let them frame the conversation.
*The particularly stupid ones will respond “That’s different.” Uh why?… “It just is…”
UncleEbeneezer
Speaking of these assholes’ anti-life beliefs:
“As attacks on trans youth ramp up and death threats are made to children’s hospitals, it is important to note that gender affirming care is one of the most life saving interventions you can give. It reduces suicidality by 73%. Study after study confirms.”
Think about that. They are passing laws to criminalize parents attempts to reduce their children’s risk of suicide. Attempts supported by science and medical health experts. Imagine trying to pass a law that parents can’t give their kids access to an anti-depressant that will help prevent suicide!!
The worst of the GOP scum are all onboard:
“Marjorie Taylor Green just announced a bill to make gender affirming care for trans teens a class C felony NATIONALLY. Tucker Carlson says he will pressure every Republican to join. It has no chance of passing the next 2 years, but this is their plan if they win in 2024.”
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@eversor: This! Because the people who like the idea of associating with a Supreme Court judge are after the sense of being untouchably superior. They’ll go hang around someone else whose high status will rub off onto them.
And all these politicians are returning the word “abortion” to its original meaning of a malformed, unviable birth.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: Although you have persuaded me, on thinking about it.
The journalists are “hacks.” I should go with that.
Llelldorin
Gaaah! That linked article is infuriating—Republicans never change, except in how they phrase things. 20 years ago it would’ve been “Nobody could possibly have predicted…” (exactly what everyone was predicting but which they were too self-righteous to listed to).
Even more maddeningly, this was one of the better ones, who (unlike a lot of his party) could at least predict the present.
Immanentize
@Betty Cracker: You don’t still use “flapdoodle” or “hedge creeper” I pray!
Mike E
This is such a well-written essay about our perilous times… blaming (advocates of) the victims for their assailants’ behavior, it’s quite the racket!
Kropacetic
They just twist this into “teens who received gender affirming care are more suicidal than the general population.” None of the anti-trans authoritarians I’ve pointed this out to have been receptive to what I would consider the more salient interpretation of the statistics (the blockquote).
Their feelings don’t care about the facts.
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
“
Foureight dead in Oh-hi-oh.”Real Hallmark movie material. Yeesh.
Kropacetic
But the left is shrill.
Raoul Paste
Was there always this much fomented hate, and people who were happy to be liars for money? It’s probably pointless to speculate
Today I saw a father with his young daughter at the end of their driveway, waiting for the school bus. It was good to see an example of plain human decency
UncleEbeneezer
@Kropacetic: They don’t care about suicide, period. I mean, we know how access to guns increases the risk of suicide and these people completely hand-wave that away too
Also, the obvious point that it is the world/culture of Transphobia that puts Trans people at greater risk of suicide than the general population (predominantly Cisgender people), not the gender-affirming care, is one they willfully ignore.
Mike in NC
Have just seen two photos taken this week of Senate GOP candidates quack Dr Oz and J D Vance. Both of them were wearing a dark blue suit, white shirt, and solid red necktie. I think Ron DeSatan dresses that way now as well. Shameless clones of the Fat Bastard of Mar-A-Lardass.
Omnes Omnibus
@Raoul Paste: Of course, there have always been awful people. Just like there have been decent people. And old people have always complained about young people who complain that no one understands what they are going through. Human nature is human nature.
Kropacetic
Or pretty much any fact aside from cherry-picked tidbits that can, if viewed just so, be used to support their authoritarian arguments.
cain
@UncleEbeneezer:
The funny part is that they think they are empathetic. That they are doing good.
StringOnAStick
Just tossing out an idea I read elsewhere: so, what if the reason MBS murdered Jamal Kashoggi is because Jamal was getting close to finding out that tRump sold classified info to MBS? Does that scan for anyone?
The media is doing a great job of getting everyone to believe that all the classified to SCI information recovered from tRump’s grubby mitts is still entirely secret, not daring approach the idea that any of it could have already been sold, starting on the first day of the mango moron’s illegitimate term as POTUS and continuing from there to present.
Llelldorin
@Kropacetic: Well, I certainly am, but I can’t speak for the entire left.
Kropacetic
@Llelldorin: I can certainly get that way after a sustained period of lies and gaslighting.
I’m getting better at walking away, but it’s often difficult with those close to me.
JaySinWA
@StringOnAStick: I don’t think Trump sold secrets in the tradition sense, he traded favors in the Godfather sense, and I’m pretty sure the negotiation was with Jerrod, probably with him doing Trump interests largely as a side deal. He earned (and is probably still earning) that $2B investment some way.
Baud
@StringOnAStick:
I think that type of rampant speculation is reserved for Hillary’s emails.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@JaySinWA: The Obama bros interviewed that documentary maker who filmed the Trump campaign. We saw him at a J6 hearing. He says Kushner struck him as a guy who believes he deserves to be where he is, doing what he’s doing. That’s despite being the guy who married the boss’s daughter.
Alison Rose 💙🌻💛
@Kropacetic: The “choose life” concept shoved at people who are pregnant and really do not want to be makes me think of Eddie Izzard’s “Cake or death” bit. If I’d ever gotten pregnant, abortion would have most definitely been the cake in that scenario.
Feathers
@Elizabelle: I’ll always be fascinated by the facts that in the UK, “slut” refers to a woman of unkempt appearance (runs in tights, stained garments, etc.) or who doesn’t maintain a clean house. In the US it became a purely sexual term. There’s a great saying that women threw off the chains of chastity, only to remain shackled to the vacuum cleaner.
Slut has varying meanings and a specificity that means it is not at all like the n-word. It is feminized, but I’ve heard it used about men. You can argue that X is not a slut based on X’s actions and the clear meaning of the word. Not possible with the n-word.
Mai Naem mobile
@StringOnAStick: there was a long piece on MBS in I think The Atlantic recently. There were allegations that MBS consumes illegal substances. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s just having mood swings depending on what he’s doing. Khashoggi may have just pissed him off at the wrong time when hr ordered his murder .
Gin & Tonic
@StringOnAStick: That theory makes sense to me.
A Man for All Seasonings (formerly Geeno)
Journalists are not “sluts”, they’re “whores”. They get paid for what they do.
Oddly, I feel the word “whore” fits them much better than it fits sex workers.
cain
@Feathers: The equivalent derogatory term for Indians in the UK is the p-word that consists of the first 4 words of Pakistan.
I’d have a hard time feeling offended if someone called me that.. but then again it’s all about inflection and the intent behind it. I mean you could use ‘Machine” in a very menancing way and you might as well call me the ‘n’ word.
Elizabelle
@StringOnAStick: Good theory. If you remember where you saw it, do share.
Makes sense to me.
Elizabelle
@A Man for All Seasonings (formerly Geeno): I’d agree with you there.
Sex workers do not generally lie you into a war.
Barbara
@cain:
Not as brutal as it is for those women and their loved ones who have to live the experience. It is ironic that anti-abortion zealots spent so much time seizing on “late” abortions and would not relent no matter how many times it was pointed out that this was some incredibly small number of pregnancies that had become catastrophically dangerous and tragic.
I have no idea whether they really understood this or even whether they cared, but anyone who chose heartbeat as a benchmark for whether a woman could have an abortion made a choice to prioritize a fetus no matter how nonviable over a woman not matter how threatened she was by her pregnancy, and they should hang their heads in shame — because it was their choice for dead women to be the preferred outcome. Pleading stupidity and ignorance should not, never, ever be accepted as an excuse for these people.
Baud
@StringOnAStick:
If Kashoggi were getting “close,” did he really not have backup notes or people who could trust to get the word out about a story that big? My knowledge comes from movies, which are not a reliable guide for how real-world reporters behave.
Mai Naem mobile
@StringOnAStick: i think Jared’s more likely to be selling info. I remember after meeting TFG post-’16 election, Richard Branson saying he was disturbed by how TFG was just all about how he was going to get back at his detractors(IRS audits etc.) I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of of the docs are info on people around the world that he can exploit. After all TFG was also known for eavesdropping on phone conversations on celebrity guests at his resorts. I still cannot believe Americans voted for this guy.
Omnes Omnibus
New manufactured scandal in Wisconsin. Mandela Barnes’s real first name is Jesse. Mandela is his middle name. That’s how desperate they are getting.
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus: Tell Rafael Cruz about it.
zhena gogolia
@Mai Naem mobile: Not everything revolves around TFG.
zhena gogolia
@StringOnAStick: My comment above was meant for you.
Kropacetic
Context matters. I would never use the n word but friends will refer to me as such. I’m not part of the group it usually refers to, but coming from the right person in the right context it can come across as inclusive and friendly.
sdhays
@StringOnAStick: As someone else pointed out in the discussion of whether Trump had already sold some of the secrets in the files he was hiding, presumably the intelligence community would know. And while they typically keep a lot of things secret, or try to, this isn’t something I think they’d sit on.
But, as the saying goes, it would be irresponsible not to speculate!
gvg
@StringOnAStick: If he already sold it. he wouldn’t need to take it, and would have been better off leaving all copies. Of course that is logical which he isn’t and assumes he didn’t want to sell it again, but his having the docs doesn’t actually prove if he sold it or not already, only it turning up somewhere it shouldn’t and being traced backwards would.
It proves he had no concept of what is the property and security of the USA and not his. We already knew that. I guess some normies didn’t.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
:cough: Willard Romney :cough:
sdhays
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh, no! Has anyone notified Ted Cruz? Or Mitt Romney??
I need to get some pearls to clutch.
Omnes Omnibus
@zhena gogolia: I’ve never been impressed by the Willard Romney and Raphael Cruz sniping either. Not shots taken at O’Rourke for Beto. It just seems dumb.
Elizabelle
@Feathers: Did not know that re the UK use. Will be watching for it in detective novels, etc.
Mai Naem mobile
@raven: several years ago NPR’s Radiolab did a long piece on what happened at Memorial. It was really tough listening to it. There is no way I could watch even a fictionalized version of this. IIRC this is the hospital that the NOLA DA went after the doctor for euthanasia and thankfully he lost the case.
Kropacetic
Agreed. In a political environment plagued by vapid hot takes, this stands out as particularly lacking in substance.
No one ever heard of a nickname?
Cameron
@Omnes Omnibus: It is really ridiculous. I worked at a place where for three years I went by my middle name, because there was another Cameron there and the bosses got tired of both of us responding when they asked to see us. Somehow I survivied.
Mai Naem mobile
Completely off topic – John Fetterman looks like a damn giant standing next to everybody. If he wins he’ll be the tallest senator tying with Lucas Strange who was also 6’9″. I am kind of surprised there hasn’t been a taller senator in 250 years.
Mai Naem mobile
@Elizabelle: the Brits use the C-word like its nothing so it seems they’re further ahead in their language ‘loosening.’
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus: Same here. People are allowed to call themselves whatever they want.
Spanky
@Kropacetic:
“I like Dwight David!”
Kropacetic
My dad goes by his middle name around his family to this day, as he was the third generation with his first given name.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mai Naem mobile: To be fair, 6’ 9” is a pretty significant outlier on the charts. I am about average height for a US male and he is 11” taller than me
Kropacetic
I will say there’s something there just given his opposition to more humane immigration, but the nickname stuff becomes a side-show. His bad positions should be denounced on their individual lack of merit.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kropacetic: Poseur!
Betty Cracker
@Mai Naem mobile: True, and reading a lot of snarky British content has kind of desensitized me to that word over the past several years. It’s not genderized there like it is here.
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic: I am pretty sure the CIA (and to a lesser degree the NSA and DOD intelligence peeps) know a good piece of what Trump revealed that caused damage to the nation.
Soprano2
@Elizabelle: I use it, and it’s exactly what I mean, because it’s what they want to do!!!! That’s how the forced birthers see it. It’s explicit. How are we supposed to say that?
Frankensteinbeck
@cain:
@Barbara:
They start from the assumption that they are the good guys. It frees them to be cruel, which is emotionally intensely satisfying, so they are super invested in that assumption. At that point, they must be correct. Facts that disagree with them must be lies pushed by evil people. If those facts become pervasive and hard to argue with, it just pisses them off because they’re being barraged with arguments that they’re not the good guy. It frees them to believe stupid, insane, and head-in-the-sand shit like pregnancies being universally a good thing. Most of them hear about ectopic pregnancies, dangerous miscarriages, stuff like that, and don’t believe it. It has to be a lie somehow, because it would make them less the good guys.
The same with anti-trans stuff. They want to believe men and women are essentially different, they’re the good guys, ergo people who are pro-trans are villains preying on children. It gives them a delightful ego oil bath. Fuck facts, they only need to find some description of themselves as the heroes and us as the villains, and that’s what must be true.
People are rarely one single emotional process, so a big enough hammer can break through this shell with some people, but it has to be a big damn hammer and they will usually go apeshit trying to fight back and prevent it. By now, to be honest, almost everyone readily persuadable by facts has at least entered some mushy middle.
cain
@Kropacetic: Yep, I get that – having been part of a black community though my ex-gf – it was lovely being part of that.
The ex would refer to all the ‘n’ stuff as ‘cussing’. I’ve never heard use the word herself though.
Alison Rose 💙🌻💛
@Mai Naem mobile: The first few times I saw pictures of him, he was sitting down or alone, so his height didn’t fully come across. Then I saw one of him with some other person who was probably of totally average height but looked liked a hobbit next to him. I can sympathize, as a 5 foot tall person, LOL.
Immanentize
@Omnes Omnibus:
Ah, the old reverse “Hussein” being pulled in Cheese Wisc, eh?
Immanentize
@Omnes Omnibus: I think in Cruz’ case, the more damaging nickname would be to start calling him “Ralphie.” Even “Teddy” would be better than Rafael.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
What else is he lying about?
Also, too, who makes a scandal about a candidate choosing the less common name to be known by?
DrDaveChemist
@Immanentize: I was too late to yesterday’s thread about your possible move, and I don’t have any leads on condos, but I can second the suggestions about looking in the Valley and West End/Armory areas, and as a PVD resident for 30 years now, I can say there’s a lot to enjoy here. Good luck finding someplace that you want to land.
Kropacetic
@cain: The way it gets thrown around as a term of endearment or generalized word for “man,” I’m long past being surprised hearing it directed my way.
Immanentize
@DrDaveChemist: Thank you! There is also this older Italian? Neighborhood I think NW of PVD that looks inviting? But that would be a car commute to the train, albeit short.
ETA Federal Hill?
Feathers
One thing about all these “pro life” people suddenly realizing that, yeah, women do die in childbirth, is that the media let them get away with lying about it for so long. Wasn’t it Bill O’Reilly who said women don’t die in childbirth and it didn’t make a ripple in the media. But Brian Williams repeats something he was told that was a bit of a stretch and he becomes a pariah.
They let them retain their respectability, despite lying about almost everything. There was also the pretense that abortion clinic violence was somehow completely unrelated to the anti-abortion movement. And we all have to live with the consequences.
cain
@Kropacetic:
Cool – although I’m not sure if I’d feel the same if someone through the ‘p’ word like that. But then again it seems very limited in usage outside the UK.
cain
@Alison Rose 💙🌻💛: Just imagine how bad being in a plane would be.
I’m about 5’7 and some change (I used to be taller!) and pretty slim it’s the perfect travel height and size.
Kropacetic
@cain: Not sure what you mean by ‘p’ word. If it’s the one I’m thinking, I only accept it directed at me in somewhat more…private encounters, said with some authority.
Much better off in the carry-on compartment than with the checked luggage…
Mai Naem mobile
@Betty Cracker: the thing with the c-word for me is that with the hard ‘C’ and the hard ‘T’ it sounds harsher and nastier.
Elizabelle
@Soprano2: Punishing women for sex? Forcing women to give birth?
Those are actually phrases you could use at the family dinner table, too.
Feathers
@Mai Naem mobile: I think both of these are examples of our language “tightening,” more than their “loosening.”
@Elizabelle: I’ve seen it on TV and in movies. Some of the invisibility is that it is also a pejorative, so what it is referring to isn’t always clear. I do remember reading it in an older novel where it was used by women definitely talking about how another woman was not being sufficiently careful about her appearance.
RedDirtGirl
@bbleh:
“The unborn” are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus, but actually dislike people who breathe. Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.”
― Methodist Pastor David Barnhart
Elizabelle
@Feathers: A take on “slovenly”, sounds like.
different-church-lady
@A Man for All Seasonings (formerly Geeno): Right. Bloggers are sluts.
Geminid
@Immanentize: How’s the bus service map in Providence? That may be an option for getting to the rail station.
different-church-lady
@Mike in NC: Cult. Of. Personality.
Barbara
@Frankensteinbeck: Anyone can read the story of what happened to Savita Halappanavar in Ireland, who died while physicians and nurses waited around for her fetus to stop having a heartbeat. She was in “labor” for more than THREE days.Kudos to NBC News for making that connection a few weeks ago:https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/woman-died-ireland-abortion-ban-warning-americans-roe-v-wade-rcna35431
“Her heart was beating too.”
Feathers
@Betty Cracker: BBC America has a lot to answer for.
Also “pants” meaning underpants and a very mild swear word. As in, “it’s all gone pants.” That’s a fun one to throw around. First heard that on PBS on the UK Battlebots.
The UK is far more colorful and creative when it comes to swearing in general.
Mai Naem mobile
@Kropacetic: he means ‘Paki.’ I was walking home from school one day when I lived in the UK and these guys driving by yelled ‘Paki.’ We’d just moved there and I was young so I wasn’t aware of all the insult lingo but I could figure out it was an insult by the way they yelled it. Anyhow, I’ve never understood the ‘paki’ insult. Its obviously not based on their knowledge of history because they call both Indians and Pakistanis(+ Burmese,Nepalis etc) ‘pakis’. FFS at least make your insults make sense.
Urban Suburbanite
@Mai Naem mobile:
There’s a popular suspicion that Kushner gave Prince Bonesaw info on a bunch of Saudi dissidents, including Kashoggi.
Kropacetic
@Mai Naem mobile: Oh, I get it. Still, I never hear that term thrown around lovingly by the affected group.
That is a weird one. The first few times I heard it I thought of liquor stores (package stores) and didn’t make the connection
kalakal
@Mai Naem mobile:
Hmm, yes and no. You’d piss* off a lot of Brits using the C-word, a lot of us really don’t like that one. Slut really doesn’t mean much to us, in the sense Americans ( I think ) use it we’re more likely to say slapper or refer to someone as a bike. I’d never heard anyone say the N word before I came to America, I was utterly shocked when I heard it, probably the vicious UK racist equivalent would be P**i. The Brits insult each other a lot as long as they’re friends eg calling each other tossers, bastards etc.. . Funnily tosser and wanker mean the same thing but wanker is definately nastier
One thing you never want to hear is
“Oi! You!” , pretty much guarantees your about to get attacked, if there’s a “What you looking at?” following it you are going to get attacked.
A funny one was the Austin Powers movie “The Spy Who Shagged Me” – they could never have used that in the UK – shagged is equivalent to in meaning & but a bit more socially acceptable than fucked, the company execs would have had kittens.
I still worry about upsetting people after 10 years here so very rarely swear or I use Englishisms such as prat, git or doylem.
* We don’ t used pissed as angry, to us it means drunk. Pissed off means angry
Immanentize
@RedDirtGirl: This is so right on. All the benefits have been imaginary, while all the burdens ignored.
frosty fred
Pretty sure there was some sniping at Beto early on for trying to sound Hispanic (with the surname O’Rourke?!) but it was at least moderated after the publication of his kindergarten picture with the name tag Beto. As to middle names in general–in my family it’s at least as likely we go by middle names as not, I’m the third generation in the male line with the same first name, and none of us used it (well, Daddy and Grandpap would own to it in formal situations, but I hardly recognize it).
ETA: Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech, from R&J, “twists the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs.”
Immanentize
@Geminid: good idea! Considering the T shutdowns in Boston for the next month, having knowledge of the bus lines is key!
Tom Q
@Immanentize: That was my reaction, as well. How far we’ve moved in 14 years: back then, they thought throwing in the “Hussein” thing would turn voters away from Obama; now, they seem afraid “Mandela” will help Barnes.
Alison Rose 💙🌻💛
@cain: I haven’t been on a plane in forever but I do recall that it is a moment of short-stature privilege. The whole “not enough leg room” thing was not an issue for me.
NotMax
@Kropacetic
In the U.K., “fanny pack” means nothing like what it does in the U.S.
;)
Barbara
@Mai Naem mobile: 6’9″ is an outlier height even now for men.
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
When I first heard his name, months ago now, I looked up his Wikipedia page. The very first sentence says that his name is Jesse Mandela Barnes. It’s not a secret and it’s not a scandal. Republicans must be even stupider than I thought.
Kropacetic
@NotMax: Oh, do tell…
kalakal
If you really want to use English to insult people big Bill Shakespeare
came up with the perfect description of these horrible bigots a few 100 years ago
“A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a
base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited,
hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a
lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson,
glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue;
one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a
bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but
the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar”
Geminid
@Urban Suburbanite: There is also reporting that an Israeli tech company sold spyware to the Saudi government that was used to spy on Khashoggi’s texts and e-mails. That was not Kushner, though.
This winter the company was found to have sold similar spyware to the Israeli government. That caused a couple weeks delay in Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption while inquiry was made into whether the spyware was used to gather any of the proseution’s evidence. The report was that the spyware was not used.
I think the U.S. sanctioned the spyware company for selling the spyware to human rights violators.
Ksmiami
@RedDirtGirl: Amen. The forced birthers are cruel and inhumane and believe in junk science- if we had fewer dumb ppl, the GOP would never get elected
kalakal
@NotMax: Hahaha. Very, very true.
One day I caused quite a stir at the office when I asked if I could borrow a rubber.
In the UK it means an eraser.
Also I was giving a colleague a lift to work one day, told them ‘I’d knock them up at 7 in the morning”. We’re a simple folk, simply means knocking on the front door
zhena gogolia
@kalakal: I first encountered that in Sherlock Holmes, when he asked Mrs. Hudson to knock him up in the morning.
Subsole
@The Moar You Know: S’fine.
I doubt I’d enjoy any heaven that let them run it.
And they damn sure wouldn’t appreciate my afterlife-management style.
Baud
@kalakal:
“No need to return it.”
Mai Naem mobile
@Urban Suburbanite: yes, that was in the Atlantic piece as well. Kushner is just a smarter and dumber version of TFG. He’s got daddy issues like TFG. TFG tried to get out of daddy’s working class Queens’ rentals into high end Manhattan rentals and failed. Jared tried to get out of daddy’s slummy rentals into high end commercial rental property and failed and needed MBS’ bailout. Jared’s more intelligent than TFG but the bar is very low on that. But he doesn’t have that con man cunning that TFG has.
scav
@Elizabelle: There’s also slattern which pretty much mimics the Venn diagram ambiguity for slut.
Cameron
@Mai Naem mobile: And the “sport” of beating up South Asians is referred to as “whacking Paks.” Lovely.
ETtheLibrarian
Forced birthers have always believed all abortions were just birth control or women who don’t want the baby regardless of what stage of pregnancy. They have always doubted the stats about all the medical reasons and thought them overblown. The truth of that was never in their side and some will see the problems some still won’t care because for them it was about punishing the dirty whores and those women get what they deserve .
Baud
@kalakal:
Hey! WTF, Bill?
Drdavechemist
@Immanentize: Federal Hill is up above the Valley (south of what they call the 6-10 connector) and would be accessible to the train by bus or a longish walk-about 25-30 minutes walking according to Google Maps. Federal Hill and the Valley are both closer in to the city than the West End. When I was commuting to BU, I would either bus or bike from my home on the East Side to the downtown train station since convenience and cost were better than parking downtown. On the rare occasions when I wanted to drive to the train, I would go to S. Attleboro, but that station is currently closed and I have no idea what the several hundred people who used to park there are doing now.
There are also some new condos closer to the East Side that would appear to be marketed toward college students but that would also be within walk/bike/bus distance of the train station.
I don’t comment often, but I lurk almost every day, so feel free to post any questions in an open thread and I will keep my eyes open.
Mai Naem mobile
@Barbara: i get that 6’9″ is an outlier but you would think among the mostly male senators of 250 yrs you would have somebody taller. Even Bill Bradley was only 6’5″.
Other MJS
@Elizabelle:
As a sarcasm and irony junkie, I appreciate your sharing that.
cain
@Kropacetic: In the UK, the word ‘paki’ is considered an offensive term to south asian people.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@pat: I am so pleased to see the term “forced birth” becoming common all of a sudden (at least to me). It so precisely describes what they actually want – to force women to give birth, no matter what, and really having nothing to do with so-called reverence for life.
Subsole
@Elizabelle: Those aren’t sluts, though. Those aren’t even common whores.
They’re just fatuous, cowardly little social climbers. Kind of discount-rack glitterati. They want to drink Rush Limbaugh’s and Roger Ailes’ cocktails, scarf their benzos, and laugh at their horrible jokes – without ever having to look at what sort of person that makes them.
A slut just likes having sex. And really, assuming everyone’s clear up front about what they want and what they’re getting, what’s wrong with that?
kalakal
@Mai Naem mobile:
It’s based on the fact they’re ignorant, vicious, morons. Like the Americans who attack Sikhs because they think they’re Muslims.
Kropacetic
@cain: Oh, yeah, someone already pointed it out. It’s funny, even though it was discussed earlier in the thread I didn’t think of it because it isn’t really part of my cultural conscious.
cain
@Mai Naem mobile: I couldn’t either. I’m supposed to be insulted because you’re referring me as Pakistani? Bruh, the two countries have only been separated for like 85 years or something – we’re all still the same people. There are entire families whose only one or two generations away from originally being from Pakistan and vice versa.
That said, the south asian immigrant population in the UK have primarily been rural/villages. The people coming to the U.S. until recently have been folks with advanced degrees or very well educated. So that might be a factor – those folks take the whole Pakistan thing quite a bit more seriously.
cain
@kalakal:
Damn, my wife says that to me all the time (cuz I’m hard of hearing..)
ETA #150!!
Kropacetic
Except for the whole part where it’s happening in the face of forced-birth becoming official policy in many places.
Frankensteinbeck
@Mai Naem mobile:
The difference I see is that Trump has descended into malignant narcissism so far that he seems unable to behave except on impulse. Kushner, while jaw-droppingly stupid, is still capable of planning. Bad planning, but he doesn’t just live in the moment.
But holy shit, is Jared Kushner one dumb fuck. Trump dropping a treasure chest of international corruption into his lap saved him from losing the giant fortune he was born into, and it is hard to do that.
FelonyGovt
@UncleEbeneezer: Yet another hypocrisy on their part. During the worst of the pandemic they were all about “masks and isolation are causing kids to be depressed and commit suicide! OMG!!!1!!”
dnfree
@Elizabelle: excellent decision by you and Betty Cracker. I think “sluts” is too Imbedded in the language as referring to females and sex.
Gravenstone
@StringOnAStick: I believe Kashoggi was a significant critic of the Saudi royal family. That made it personal to MBS. And no one in the family would control or stop him once he decided to silence that critic.
WaterGirl
We still have $275 left on angel match #4, if anyone wants to get in on that match.
There are no more angel matches in the wings at the moment.
Paul in KY
@Mai Naem mobile: The tallest English Monarch is still Edward IV at 6’5″. Died in 1483.
Baud
Old School
@WaterGirl: Wow! $11,000 in about three days. This is amazing.
Paul in KY
@RedDirtGirl: Thank you for sharing that. Very good observation there.
Paul in KY
@kalakal: My mother is English & couldn’t believe it was in the movie title.
trollhattan
@kalakal:
I’ll never not laugh at “I’ll knock you up.”
WaterGirl
@Old School: Yes!
As soon as the remaining $275 is matched, the $2,000 Balloon Juice angel can add her $2k, and we’ll be a tiny bit more than halfway to our $25k and the total $75k!
C Stars
I haven’t read all the comments but since it seems germaine I wanted to drop this link to an extremely poignant op ed essay that ran in the Post yesterday:
What it means when miscarriage is a crime
The whole thing is a wrenching description of one woman’s experience with miscarriage, but a quote that really stuck with me is this:
Like they literally can’t even keep pregnant women alive pre-abortion ban, and now this fucking disaster. It’s murderous. It’s shocking. I am not surprised that voters won’t stand for it.
ET add link
Feathers
@Immanentize: Don’t know if this is helpful, but if you go into Google Maps and select directions, it will give you not only the driving directions, but walking and public transportation. You can find bus and train routes that way. It does do it by time, so if you may want to change the time to when you would be traveling, as you may get weird timings if you are looking at it late at night.
Gravenstone
@Omnes Omnibus: I’ll be Rafael “Ted” Cruz is behind the dumbfuckery.
Emmyelle
In fairness, this was never a Freshman Ethics Seminar. It was always the conversation that happened on the Friday after Freshman Ethics Seminar when all the dudes got stoned. And all the women drank rum and diet cokes and hung out with the sophomore guys.
Uncle Cosmo
@NotMax: Some years back I was going through baggage screening at (I think) Heathrow before a flight to (I think) Dublin. The attendant pointed to my waist & said something like “we’ll have that too.”
I replied, “Oh, you mean my fanny pack.”
He visibly flinched.
“Oh, that’s right,” I said as I put the pack on the belt for x-raying, “you call this a ‘bum bag,’ don’t you?”
He smiled uncertainly. So I leaned over the belt and hissed, “Well in the States it’s a fanny pack!“ Just to see if he flinched again. (Narrator: He did indeed.)
(For the uninitiated, in the UK “fanny” customarily denotes female genitalia, whereas “bum” is one’s backside. Also, FWIW, a “trash bag” over here is a “bin liner” over there, as in “Osama bin Liner…” :^D Two nations divided by a common language, indeedy-do!)
bbleh
@WaterGirl: $75K is not chump change among small donations.
So, as a “bundler,” do they send around the occasional Executive Foot Massager? Can you influence legislation yet? Do Majority Whips return your calls?
Please use your powers for good.
Uncle Cosmo
Also FWIW, “root” used as a verb is Strine** slang for “do the dirty.” A plot point centuries in the past, critical to the creation of the world of Aussie SF/fantasy writer Sean McMullen‘s Greatwinter trilogy, turns on this word, repeated in public as part of an off-color joke by a child innocent of that usage.
**I.e., Australian. And BTW, if a male Australian is an Ozzie, howcum a female Australian is a Shiela and not a Harriet? I mentioned this in an online discussion to someone from Oz, remarking offhandedly that they probably wouldn’t understand the question, and got the reply, “Croyst, y’think we don’t get Yank TV reruns down here?” :^D
Alison Rose 💙🌻💛
@WaterGirl: Kicked in $25, wish it could be more!
StringOnAStick
@Elizabelle: I saw it while scrolling through twitter, it wasn’t by any news person or big name person. I admit it rather stopped me in my tracks given the recent news. The killing of Kashoggi struck me at the time as a completely insane thing for a government to have done, but then again they knew our government was in the hands of fellow criminals who wouldn’t cause a fuss over it. Something never added up for me when it happened, and now this secret document stuff comes into focus. Might just be a coincidence, might not.
El Muneco
@Uncle Cosmo: I love to sing the lyrics to “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” in a (bad) broad Australian accent:
“Root, root, root for the hoooooooooome team…”
Matt McIrvin
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh no! That’s like my aunt Lucille. Her first name was Jessie (after her father Jesse) but she went by her middle name. Scandal!
WaterGirl
@Alison Rose 💙🌻💛: Thank you!
lowtechcyclist
@p.a.:
Their ‘theology’ is a loose construct indeed, and AFAICT most evangelicals buy into the notion of an ‘age of accountability’ (basically sometime in late pre-teen or early teen years): if you die before reaching that age, you go straight to Heaven, but if you don’t die until afterward, it all depends on whether you’ve accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior.
But the fun part of that is that every aborted ‘unborn baby’ goes straight to Heaven, by their lights. And since the women and girls who have abortions are heathens and women of bad character, if they were born they probably wouldn’t learn about Christ while growing up, and according to their understanding of things, most of them would go to Hell.
So saving their lives means damning most of them to an eternity in Hell.
sab
Late too this thread, but a comment I have made before. Here in Ohio I know women who very much want to have more children, but after difficult pregnancies they are now afraid to try. They don’t want to die and leave their other kids motherless.
Either utter ignorance ( Lalalala I am Republican and I can’t hear anything outside my party bubble) or vile baby selling ( if the white mom dies we can place the kid and if she has pregnancy problems that’s her problem not ours, since she isn’t having kids we can place in other nice white families.)
J R in WV
@kalakal:
You left out the operative word there, “BIGOT” — which is in my opinion more important than moron,, and goes with ignorant and vicious very well.