Extremist so-called leaders have taken unprecedented steps to restrict access to abortion medication.
Today, I convened leading medical experts and reproductive rights advocates to make clear: @POTUS and I stand with them in the fight to protect reproductive health care. pic.twitter.com/mOHaEFVmH0
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) February 24, 2023
Today the @VP is convening a meeting to discuss attacks on medication abortion.
She will address unprecedented attacks that are attempting to undermine the authority of the FDA & take away reproductive health care for women — no matter where they live. https://t.co/9hNv56Fm3q
— Rachel Palermo (@RachelPalermo46) February 24, 2023
Vice President Kamala Harris defended the abortion drug mifepristone on Friday, calling attacks against it another attempt to attack fundamental rights in the United States, as some activist groups work to end American sales of the pill…
Medication abortion has drawn increasing attention since the U.S. Supreme Court last year reversed its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, which had guaranteed abortion rights nationwide.
Democratic President Joe Biden directed federal agencies to expand access to medication abortion in response to the decision, which has allowed more than a dozen Republican-led states to adopt new abortion bans.
Harris met with reproductive rights groups on the topic at the White House, and said attacking the drug is akin to going after the very foundation of the American public health system and is not just an attack on women’s fundamental freedoms…
Mifepristone is approved for medication abortion in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy in combination with another drug, misoprostol. Medication abortion accounts for more than half of U.S. abortions.
The FDA has said that pulling mifepristone from the market would force women to have unnecessary surgical abortions and greatly increase wait times at already overburdened clinics.
Major medical organizations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, weighed in on the side of the government, saying mifepristone “has been thoroughly studied and is conclusively safe.”
The GOP — which, admittedly, is used to voters who meekly take orders, however contradictory — is discovering an ancient political truth: Given enough social control, it’s possible to deprive a population of a particular right almost indefinitely, but people hate giving up a ‘privilege’ they’ve been used to exercising.
maybe they should have waited to lock in minority rule *before* doing something underwater in *Idaho* https://t.co/mBg1XAm3Ub
— the abbot of unreason (an archaeologist) ?? (@merovingians) February 23, 2023
We have numbers for all 50 states + DC in this report. Abortion legality and support/oppose overturning Roe
Also, we tracked how opinion moved on voting on abortion as an issue through the yearhttps://t.co/V7haIn96mQ
— Natalie Jackson (@nataliemj10) February 23, 2023
NBC First Read: "Abortion rights support remains a major challenge for the GOP, poll finds … 64% of Americans [believe] abortion should be legal in all or most cases – up from 55% who said this in 2010 … We can't remember another political issue where https://t.co/V0w1LdLrvU… https://t.co/03QqBhhMeZ
— Ben LaBolt (@BenLaBolt) February 24, 2023
Ed Kilgore, at NYMag, “The Backlash to the Reversal of Roe v. Wade Is Getting Stronger”:
During the near half-century in which the Supreme Court precedent of Roe v. Wade protected the right to choose abortion, public-opinion research on the topic tended to be of questionable value. Respondents were asked to categorize themselves as “pro-life” or “pro-choice,” depending on their subjective self-definitions. Polls asked people to engage in hair-splitting on the degree to which they wanted abortion to be legal or illegal. And the whole subject was overshadowed by the fundamental reality that political maneuvering on abortion policy had limited consequences for a majority of voters (though not for those who couldn’t access or afford abortion services).
With Roe gone, the basic laws governing reproductive decisions depend to an enormous extent on where one lives, and abortion policy is a central and urgent political decision (at least outside those few states that have re-enshrined abortion rights in state constitutions). So it’s getting easier for pollsters to weigh how the public feels about what should happen on abortion policy.
There’s already clear evidence that the abortion backlash had a tangible effect on the 2022 midterm elections and the underperformance of Republicans compared to historical precedents. But the effect on political preferences is ongoing…
Given these realities, it’s unsurprising that the anti-abortion activists whose battle cry for decades was to let the people decide are now beginning to rely on right-wing judicial activists determined to ban abortion from the bench, or a bit down the road, a Republican trifecta in Washington willing to override the states and ban abortion nationally. The stakes for 2024 are rising steadily.
Balconesfault
I’m convinced that the primary value in hammering on this issue isn’t to persuade anyone who has consistently voted R. They’ve already gone through enough cycles of cognitive dissonance that they are locked in for the foreseeable future.
But damn, there’s a lot of non-voters who have taken their rights for granted, and are needing to get over the cynical both siderism and accept that yes … there is a fundamental difference between a D and an R and not voting says you don’t care about that difference.
Baud
@Balconesfault:
QFT
Baud
Time to talk about banning gas stoves again.
Splitting Image
The most important thing to hammer home about abortion is that it is not the only health care service the Republicans are intent on taking away. It was the wedge issue they used to get the votes out, but they are and always have been opposed to anyone they don’t like getting any kind of health care treatment.
Abortion was only the beginning. They are working to make health care for trans people illegal. They want vaccine mandates made illegal, if not the vaccines themselves. They want to abolish Medicare. They want to abolish Medicaid. They want you to die, plain and simple.
OzarkHillbilly
Here goes my blood pressure again.
Frankensteinbeck
I was told for decades that Republican politicians were cynically pretending to want to overturn Roe vs Wade to manipulate the rubes. It turns out, elected Republicans are also true believers. Are the ‘libertarian’ Koch brothers complaining, or are all their major plutocrat owners hard cultural conservatives as well as wanting to not pay taxes?
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
Only about the electoral fallout.
Betty Cracker
@Splitting Image: We won’t know the true scope of the damage Republicans have done to public health with anti-mask and anti-vaccine demagoguery until the next public health crisis.
Baud
@Splitting Image:
danielx
@Baud:
How soon they forget those halcyon days of refrigerator trucks in hospital parking lots….
OzarkHillbilly
@Splitting Image:
@Baud:
Pro-Life my ass.
NotMax
Weekend open thread respite.
While some may find it ultra creepy, the ceilings are magnificent.
Anne Laurie
The voters we’re targeting here don’t care if Those People are denied medical care. Gender alignment care? They don’t (think they) know any transgender people. Medical access for poor people? ‘I can’t pay my own medical bills, why should I be forced to support freeloaders?’
But reproductive care — it’s been forced upon their attention: Their trusted GOP wants to take away their health care, and their kid’s / grandkid’s. No more Plan B, no more medical abortions, no more swift resolution of miscarriages or failed pregnancies. That was not what they thought they were voting for — they just wanted to punish ‘sluts’ and ‘perverts.
Betty
@OzarkHillbilly: Exactly right, OH. The list of anti-life positions they hold is very long.
Baud
@Anne Laurie:
I wish they’d just let me be.
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
Those people were trying to manipulate our voters.
evodevo
@Anne Laurie:
Just like with Prohibition…people thought they were only going to ban hard liquor, not beer or wine…oops!
NotMax
@Frankensteinbeck
Nary a peep from David, who died in 2019.
OzarkHillbilly
The kids are alright.
This country on the other hand…
JWR
This one hits close to home. (She’s my Rep!) NBC LINK
What’s next? Revive the WWII-era Internment Camps? That’s where this idiot is heading.
Baud
@JWR:
Disloyalty? Again, always projection.
OzarkHillbilly
Her only concern is her liability, must be a Republican.
lowtechcyclist
@Frankensteinbeck:
That may have been true for decades, just not this one or the past one.
My take (hardly an original thesis, I know) is that the 2010 election marked a sea change. The wave of new GOP Congresspersons elected that year had been listening to Rush Limbaugh for their entire adult lives, or close to it. And of course watching Fox News when that came into being.
They’d been drinking the Kool-Aid from the get-go, they were true believers, and a LOT of them came into Congress in that wave year. And since then, new GOP Congresspersons have been even further down the rabbit hole. And fewer and fewer of them are from the Mitch McConnell generation that was happy to cynically use the rubes for their own ends, but weren’t drinking the Kool-Aid themselves.
OzarkHillbilly
Kings outlast Clippers 176-175 in double overtime
That must of been quite the game.
A Ghost to Most
Christian fascists are traitors to American democracy.
WereBear
I want to see a Scopes Trial effect. After they were globally humiliated, fanatical cults laid low for a while.
mrmoshpotato
@OzarkHillbilly: Tell me about it. It never ceases to amaze me how much these bastards hate most of their fellow humans.
satby
So true! Plus, they never connect that the medical care for miscarriages and non-viable pregnancies is the same as abortion care. Unless it happens to you, it doesn’t come up, but now the horror stories are getting publicized.
@NotMax: @Baud: 😘 This is the content I keep coming back for.
Princess
The religion Republicans want to punish the sluts and control women.
The economics Republicans want a mass of desperate workers who will do anything for crap pay and for this they need more poor babies.
Criminalizing abortion suits everyone.
mrmoshpotato
@OzarkHillbilly:
Everyone’s ass is pro-life. Without the anus, we’d poison ourselves from digestion.
Matt McIrvin
I hope they have a plan to somehow get mifepristone re-approved if the courts just yank it over a procedural objection.
It’s the pattern we saw in the attempts to overturn the ACA: autocratic rule through RWNJ federal courts using bad-faith arguments exploiting procedural loopholes that generally don’t touch the merits of the case.
I wonder if to some extent this is a projection-based tactic inspired by the idea that liberal courts are always using “technicalities” to protect bad people.
Baud
@mrmoshpotato:
I would like to subscribe to your Ass Facts newsletter.
satby
@WereBear: But historically, that was more a result of the leading figure of the religious right at the time, William Jennings Bryan, dying five days after the end of the trial rather than the trial itself. Without a strong figurehead, the fundamentalists movement fractured. Despite the movie, Scopes lost and anti-evolution prevailed at trial, and influenced teaching almost into the 60s.
BretH
The anti-abortion fanatics have had one tactic from the outset: Never an inch backwards, always forward. I can’t claim ownership of that because I read it several decades ago, but it has proven to be 100% true.
There will be no stopping until women are under the full control of these people.
Mousebumples
I believe WaterGirl is planning another postcard/music post for tonight if anyone wants to stop by.
If you want to write for the Wisconsin State Senate race, check out this thread from Tuesday.
We’re still working on the details for the Supreme Court race, but #PostcardsToVoters is working with WisDems and already has that campaign started. Email [email protected] or text JOIN to 484-275-2229 to get started with them
P.S. The 1849 Wisconsin abortion ban is up for state Supreme Court review – I think later this year. With Roe being overturned, it’s now in effect…
Baud
@BretH:
They won’t stop until they are stopped.
OzarkHillbilly
@mrmoshpotato: I’ve got a sew complaints about my ass.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: I’m pretty sure you don’t want to subscribe to my ass facts newsletter.
Cameron
@mrmoshpotato: Did you just invoke Anus, the dreaded Egyptian god of the Dark Void?
kalakal
@OzarkHillbilly:
That deeply shocks and sickens me.
How anyone could be so callous
kalakal
@Baud: The paper that gets to the bottom of every story
Baud
@kalakal:
The reporters have inside access.
WereBear
@satby: Yes, but that cross-examination lived on :)
But I wasn’t saying the South changed, because it lives to not change :) Texas continued to have an outsized influence.
It’s probably the embrace of modernity in the 20s which did the most to broaden the culture at the time. And women getting the vote!
WereBear
@Baud: Exactly.
WereBear
@Cameron: Fear him! He wants your shit!
kalakal
A strong contender for “Appalling idea of the day” shambles out of the murk.
Boris Johnson wants to become head of NATO
scribbler
@Mousebumples: Thanks so much for the reminder. So excited for this race and the possibility for positive change in the state!
ETA: I mean, THESE races!!
Jeffro
@Splitting Image:
All of this is true…and yet, it’s incredibly important that we stay focused on this one issue by itself.
I don’t want people thinking about vaccines, or trans issues, or Medicare, or Medicaid, or anything else: we already have big majority support on the simple, single issue of womens’ reproductive freedom. I don’t want to confuse low-info voters with all these related issues, I don’t want weirdo anti-vaxxers feeling like they can’t support abortion rights, I don’t want to lose people who for whatever reason are squicked out by trans issues, I don’t want folks to be thinking about “moochers” on Medicaid. (All their takes, btw, not mine).
Just take this one issue and run with it. Run hard with it. It will kill the GOP most everyplace.
lowtechcyclist
@WereBear:
He can have it – that shit is fucked up and bullshit. ;-)
kalakal
@Baud: Not afraid to dish the dirt
Matt McIrvin
@satby: What also made it a little different back then was that in some ways, Bryan’s movement was the religious left.
My impression is that while schools may have still been pushing creationism through the mid-20th century, it had lost intellectual juice. You weren’t going to win a lot of support in mainstream media, etc. by claiming that evolution was a lie and the earth was 6000 years old. But by, say, 1983 that had all turned around and you could.
I recall reading Martin Gardner’s Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, a book he wrote about various pseudoscientific movements in the 1950s, and the chapter on scientific creationism was interesting–it described it as a moribund, nearly dead movement, of which George McCready Price was the last great advocate. It was sad to read in the late 1980s because of course at that point “creation science” had made a roaring comeback, was endorsed by national Republican politicians and was trying to reestablish itself as the default in American schools.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Oh gawd… The puns are as painful as my hemorrhoids.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
So the puns are more painful than your buns?
OzarkHillbilly
@kalakal: He will do for NATO what Brexit has done for Britain.
Mousebumples
@scribbler: Trust me, I know! On Wisconsin!
lowtechcyclist
@Jeffro:
And let’s give it a go with Virginia this fall. Their entire state legislature is up for re-election, and the GOP there fought to preserve the right of government officials to know about people’s menstrual cycles. Fuck those panty-sniffers.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: They’re getting worse even as I type.
Baud
@Jeffro:
Agree. We should avoid needlessly complicating our message.
Anyway
@Baud:
Std Disc: IANAL
Amir Khalid
@kalakal:
The idea of BoJo holding any public office again is risible.
kalakal
@Anyway: In depth journalism
Ksmiami
@Jeffro: yep. The current revanchist GOP needs to be destroyed for this country to have a chance
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: LOL!
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud:
Quantum Field Theory
ETA: I am not aware of all internet traditions.
Baud
@kalakal:
On ass-ignment.
Jeffro
I could not agree more. For multiple reasons, it’s vital that Blue Virginia turns out in overwhelming numbers this fall.
Baud
@Chief Oshkosh:
Quoted for truth.
mrmoshpotato
@Cameron: I ummm….. don’t know.
Matt McIrvin
The abortion issue worked in favor of Republicans for decades and it’s now clear that it’s because Roe existed. Not because there was anything wrong with Roe, but because it meant that the people who wanted some form of legal abortion felt safe that it wasn’t going away, so they didn’t have to be single-issue voters about it. The salience and the intensity on the pro-abortion-rights side was low, and most of the passion that could turn out voters was on the anti side.
(The antis were also really good at working the refs, so that the mainstream media promoted the impression that Democrats were crazy extreme on this issue and the center was fairly restrictionist. Surely some kind of Grand Bargain could be struck!)
The conventional wisdom that most people don’t really care about this issue unless they’re anti-abortion should have evaporated the moment Dobbs came down.
Baud
@Jeffro:
Decent people need to defend their bodily autonomy the way right wingers defend their guns.
kalakal
@Jeffro: Agree. Keep the message simple, to the point, and ram it down their throats.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
It will take years for the media to catch up. We can’t count on them to visit our diners.
SFAW
@kalakal:
I eagerly await Tony Jay’s comments as to why this is a (more or less) great idea.
kalakal
@Baud: Unafraid to expose what no other journalists will
SFAW
@Baud:
“Our diners”? Are those the ones where the “House Specialties” include arugula, Belgian endive, and Grey-Poupon-encrusted everything?
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
rikyrah
Our Vice-President is always working👏🏾👏🏾
SFAW
@Baud:
Get thee behind me,
SatanBaud.No, wait, that didn’t come out right.
kalakal
@SFAW: Personally I’d be happy with him being made head of SATO* for life. They could give him a nice office on St. Helena
* Created just for him
kalakal
@rikyrah: Good morning
SFAW
@kalakal:
For some reason, I always thought St. Helena was a lot closer to France and England. Thanks for increasing my knowledge!
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: and worse…
Ken
You’re never going to become a pundit with opinions like that.
Anyway
@satby:
I don’t understand why the medical community isn’t more vocal about this — that they can’t provide women’s healthcare with the restrictions passed by Rethug legislatures. Gun owners scream all the time about every imagined infringement on their rights — here we have real women facing dangers to their health and its not leading the news.
Chief Oshkosh
@kalakal:
BoBo and the rest of Brexit crew ought to be wretches in some penal colony off the north tip of Scotland.
kalakal
@Chief Oshkosh: You’re kinder than me: see comment 80.
Though Rockall would do nicely
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: Ha! It worked! Now everyone thinks Baud is quoting something I said because it’s true! My soash meads stock just went up!
Chief Oshkosh
@kalakal: I’m still waiting on someone here to connect “tip” and “penal” in the intended entendre.
ETA: I’d take St. Helena over an island north of Scotland. I think…
ETA2: and thanks for the link to Rockall. Weird and wonderful things you learn these days.
NotMax
@OzarkHillbilly
I, for one, tend to shy away from dabbling in ass cracks.
:)
Matt McIrvin
@SFAW: The first place they exiled Napoleon was Elba, which is just off the Tuscan coast. That turned out to be way, way too close to mainland Europe.
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: and worse…
kalakal
@Chief Oshkosh:
I’ve come around to thinking Rockall would be a better place to dump that wretched crew. It seems cruel to inflict them on the good folk of St. Helena.
And Rockall does have an appropriate recommendation
mrmoshpotato
I should’ve known my reply to OH would cause this avalanche of shit.
Suzanne
I have noticed a strange behavior (well, at least I think it’s strange) around the issue of abortion, and I have noticed it in other contexts, too. That is: some people genuinely seem to think that nothing bad will ever happen to them. I’m not sure if they just face facts and then subsequently assume/hope for the best, or if they just push thoughts out of their minds to mentally “avoid confrontation”. I remember reading a quote from a commander in the military who said that, if he told ten soldiers that nine of them would die on a mission, each of them would think, “Wow, I’m really going to miss those guys!”. I am sure that dumbass delusional optimism is some sort of evolutionary strategy when faced with an immediate threat, but hot damn if it is seriously maladaptive in other contexts.
It relates to abortion because we will say things like, “What if that was your/your wife’s/your daughter’s miscarriage and she couldn’t get care?”, and it is not persuasive because they just genuinely think that nothing bad will happen. Or, like, when we said, “Little girls who are raped by their family members will get pregnant and that’s terrible”…..they didn’t believe us until it happened to that poor girl in Ohio. I have noticed that evangelicals are terrible at this. I’m not sure if they honestly think that God will keep bad shit from happening to them (even though the Bible is full of bad shit happening to good people).
It’s a failure of empathy, but it’s more accurately a failure of imagination that comes prior to empathy. Like, if you cannot even imagine yourself in a tough situation, there’s no way to even elicit a response from a hypothetical.
kalakal
@mrmoshpotato: You surely didn’t expect us to turn the other cheek?
Scout211
This happened earlier this week, so it may have already been posted. But it fits this thread, so I am posting it here.
Twenty-One States Announce Historic Governor-Led Reproductive Freedom Alliance
Baud
@Scout211:
Awesome. We need those types of stories. Not just the bad stuff. Especially because of the bad stuff.
kalakal
@Suzanne: You’re right. It is a a total lack of imagination, their world view is so closed it’s almost as if their cognitive faculties never got as far as object permanence . They’ll scream about how social security/medicaid/medicare should be cut and then be shocked when their social security/medicaid/medicare is cut.
It leads to a weird circular logic only bad/weak people should suffer negative consequences and that’s because they’re bad/weak people.
It’s the old deserving and undeserving poor thing and everybody except them is undeserving.
As an extra bonus should one of them suffer the rest instantly invoke ‘no true scotsman’
oldgold
The party of “limited government” has shown its true colors once again. This week Lee County Florida’s Executive Committee has voted & passed the “Ban the Jab” resolution, asking Governor DeSantis to ban the sale and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine. Some members of the Committee referred to the vaccine as a “bio-weapon.”
WereBear
It’s a kind of, “No one I know voted for Nixon!”
In highly conforming societies, secrets are kept and a facade is polished with devoted care. This hobbles their experience and their critical thinking skills, as we see with the Evangelicals who easily lose it over what we think is the most trivial differences.
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: What is wrong with her? I mean, you find someone on the floor, you try to figure out if something is wrong with them, isn’t that common sense?
Baud
@WereBear:
Or the more generalized “both parties are the same.”
EarthWindFire
It’s worse than that. They want to pat themselves on the back for “letting”you be born, then work you until you’ve outlived your usefulness. Why give anyone health care? You got sick? Just means you’ve outlived your useful life.
For a bunch of folks who don’t believe in Darwin, they sure practice survival of the fittest.
delphinium
@Suzanne: Republicans/conservatives/Christians get abortions too, but somehow that is overlooked in the discussions. As others have pointed out, these folks think that if they do need an abortion that it is justifiable and all will be forgiven by God and their family, unlike anyone else who gets one. So besides lack of empathy/imagination it is also the usual hypocritical stance that this is fine for me but not for thee.
Kay
@Scout211:
Democrats at the state level have been great. Really pleased at their response, both rhetorical and in terms of concrete actions. They did quite well in the midterms with it – they should keep pushing.
OzarkHillbilly
@mrmoshpotato: And worse…
delphinium
@Scout211: This is great news! I hope these types of alliances can be formed for other issues as well. We need to keep looking forward regardless of what Republicans do.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
I wish I could assuage your pain.
Joey Maloney
There’s no possibility that Flobalob came up with that idea on his own. He’s got to be acting on instruction from his Russian handlers.
@kalakal:
kalakal
@Baud: All things must pass
OzarkHillbilly
For some reason or other this puts me in mind of Tevye’s plea to God: “I know, I know. We are Your chosen people. But, once in a while, can’t You choose someone else?”
Baud
@kalakal:
You have been a real asset to this discussion.
OzarkHillbilly
@kalakal: And worse….
sdhays
@kalakal: Did…did no one tell him that most of the leaders of NATO countries are also leaders of EU countries?
kalakal
@Baud: Glad to be of assistance
kalakal
@sdhays: Boris is well known for his mastery of detail.
And he’s already got his command bunker prepared
WereBear
@Soprano2: It’s downright eerie. It’s a phone call
I would expect the scandal would be she would have left and called from the car as her way to the next appointment.
But this person doubled down.
Baud
@sdhays:
He probably just wants access to vegetables.
OzarkHillbilly
@Soprano2: She thought he was drunk. She asked him if he was OK and when he was unresponsive just assumed it was confirmation of her assumption. The fact of the matter was the man didn’t even drink.
As for her, she is a broken person and should be kept far away from the rest of society.
Suzanne
I have literally met people who have said, “I’ll never get cancer”. Uhhhhh, like, that’s a thing that happens to a lot of people. Probably many that they know, who they likely consider “good people”.
I am somewhat neurotic, and I have to be reminded that the worst outcomes in any given situation are somewhat unlikely. So I don’t relate to this mindset at all.
But it’s really toxic, because if you can’t imagine bad outcomes happening to you/your loved ones, then you have no cognitive empathy. I would like to think that social-emotional learning would help get past this mindset, but also just BASIC-ASS REALITY must slap them upside the head at some point.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: and worse…
Chief Oshkosh
@kalakal: There’s a dark horse joke in there somewhere.
OzarkHillbilly
@kalakal: and worse…
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: And worse…
eclare
It is gray, drizzly, and 45 here in Memphis, so I am going to sit on the couch and binge the most recent season of Great British Baking Show. I’ve been saving it for a day like this.
Suzanne
Very O/T: has anyone watched Cocaine Bear? I’m mildly curious.
ETA: I really enjoy the incredibly straightforward title.
WereBear
@Suzanne: Part of it is that we all live in a world of scams now. Decades of trying convince us what is good for profits is good for the rest of us has devolved into obvious lies.
I’m not surprised people seek alternative sources when everything we encounter about something contradicts the last thing we were told. Many chronic disease sufferers are the people who help the most, because they aren’t getting on the fad of the moment. They are doing science, not getting funded by drug companies.
Which I don’t call science, but that’s another thing Republicans have tried to ruin, by forcing Ayn Rand Rules.
EarthWindFire
She’s ok with people showing up drunk to her home showings then. WTAF?
kalakal
@Suzanne: For the most part it’s toxic and results in a callous lack of empathy.
I have seen it’s tragic flip side when bad things happen to people eg cancer and they assume it must be their own fault.
Many years ago I used to work in a hospital for people with learning disabilities ( one of the old asylums that thankfully no longer exist) and many of the parents of the residents broke your heart. They were convinced that they were somehow to blame for their child having NiemanNiemann Picks or PKU or whatever and their child suffered for something they had done. Often they felt shame for having ‘abandoned’ a child they could never have cared for due to lack of support. They had been wracked with guilt for decades.
In point of fact the society of time had largely dictated their actions but they felt it was their own personal sin.
Needless to say this is not the attitude of our modern MAGA fundy nothing is ever their fault. They are the real victims
mrmoshpotato
@kalakal: I’m 99.99999% sure that Jesus wasn’t talking about getting slapped on both ass cheeks.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Obviously, the people are most shocked by the life-threatening cases where abortion is denied, so it’s good politics to highlight them. But it’s such a retreat on abortion rights. It makes me sad.
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne: Very astute comment.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
I see what you did there.
mrmoshpotato
@sdhays: Hahaha. “What’s the EU?” asked BoJo.
WereBear
There was a chat on Mastodon that pointed out to me just how much sludge is out there to be waded through, and how difficult it is for someone who doesn’t have much in the way of assessing sources or evaluating the science to find out what they need to find out, and trust it when they think they do.
Especially, as I saw so much growing up, their culture punished them for “too much thinking.”
OzarkHillbilly
@EarthWindFire: It was the homeowner on the floor.
Cameron
@SFAW: Are we talking veggie platters or crudites?
OzarkHillbilly
@mrmoshpotato: and worse…
Barbara
@OzarkHillbilly: She has clearly been advised to say nothing that could be construed as an admission of liability, so this is what she came up with. I’m not defending her because I obviously don’t know any details, but I do think a woman’s reaction is more likely to be affected by worry over inherent threat potential (drunk guy is pissed to find a stranger in his house) than a man’s, and that this kind of fear often never even occurs to men.
Once in a position of safety she probably should have called her employer, if not the authorities.
Omnes Omnibus
@kalakal: Who amongst us wouldn’t hide in a ‘fridge to avoid Piers Morgan? It is one of the most relatable things Boris has ever done.
Jeffro
@Suzanne: I saw the trailer on YouTube, and I was kind of surprised how gory and f-wordy it was. But then again, it was YouTube, not in a theater.
I can’t decide if it’ll be worth it just to see Ray Liotta (RIP) again. (He actually has a few more posthumous releases coming out this year and next – wild)
Barbara
@EarthWindFire: He owned the house.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus:
OMG Piers Morgan is just disgusting. Just a total trash human. Watching him continue to be garbage to Meghan Markle because she wasn’t into him reminds me that some people are just 100% incapable of reasonable behavior and probably shouldn’t be let off-leash.
Suzanne
@mrmoshpotato:
Rotating tag: NOMINATED.
OzarkHillbilly
@Barbara: 911.
Baud
@mrmoshpotato:
What happens in Galilee stays in Galilee.
WaterGirl
@Suzanne: So tempting!
Balloon Juice, come for the politics, stay for the ass jokes.
mrmoshpotato
@Suzanne: I’m asstounded!
eclare
@OzarkHillbilly: Yeah. I don’t get that at all.
Barbara
@OzarkHillbilly: Of course, in retrospect she should have called. Not clear she understood the gravity of his condition. I like to think I would have done better.
Scuffletuffle
@NotMax: what a gorgeous place!!!!
Barbara
@Jeffro: It has an R rating so I assumed it wasn’t just a lighthearted comedic send off.
narya
@Suzanne: I think it’s more that acknowledging that they/a family member might need this care would cause cognitive dissonance on a massive scale. They’ve been taught, and believe, that only slutty-mc-slut-sluts ever need this care; realizing that they need it or want it upsets the whole apple cart. And upset apple carts are way too difficult to handle–if THIS one thing is wrong, what if other things are wrong, too? My personal observation is that one of the big dividing lines is how/whether people handle ambiguity; folks who need there to be VERY CLEAR RULES THAT APPLY ALL THE TIME have a much more difficult time dealing with any information that challenges those rules; they’ll discount the information rather than examine the rules. (We all do this to some extent, of course.)
BlueGuitarist
@Mousebumples:
Thanks!
yay for postcards!
We can make a difference with postcards to Get Out The Vote, especially in relatively low turnout elections like Wisconsin April 4, 2023
We/Postcards can help flip the Wisconsin Supreme Court
and help prevent a 2/3 R majority in the state senate by flipping WI-SD-08 – which won’t be easy because Republicans have gerrymandered it, but doable, especially with a great candidate:
https://www.jodiforsenate.com/
is there a Rosie the Riveter We Can Do It postcard gif?
Erin Brockovich was in East Palestine talking activism and mentioned her book, “Superman’s Not Coming: Our National Water Crisis and What WE THE PEOPLE Can Do About It.”
(she didn’t say postcards are our superpower, but still….)
eclare
@Barbara: To me the weirdest thing is that she assumed he was drunk and passed out. So does every man in her life get drunk and pass out?
My first thought would be some sort of diabetic reaction.
kalakal
@mrmoshpotato: that’s just an assumption
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Barbara: Or a musical…
🎶 Cocaine Bear! 🎶
kalakal
@Omnes Omnibus: They should have let Morgan in the fridge with him and shut the door.
J R in WV
My first thought would be / is a “medical emergency” call 911. At my former place of work, long ago in a time before history, the network guys had a contractor in to upgrade server systems in the network center. As they exited that secure facility, the contractor fell over with a heart attack. Fortunately the HR people had sponsored courses in CPR, and had heart machines all through the giant building. Plus only 4 minutes from a fire department with paramedics and rescue trucks.
They had the poor guy into a cardiac hospital in 15 minutes, he survived, and returned to work to complete that task before taking his retirement. As opposed to this “person” who had no thoughts at all, and just left a situation where they could have saved a life with a brief phone call.
Pretty strange.
No humanity there at all.
You have to wonder, do they have a family? How is that working for them?
kalakal
@eclare: Mine would be a stroke or cva but yes, some medical event.
She’s not just despicable, she’s seriously off
Nelle
@eclare: My uncle was found passed out on the street (well before medical bracelets) and carted off to a hospital, where he was shunted off to the side until they could get to the “elderly drunk.” He died of diabetic shock in the hospital he helped to found.
His funeral, in a small, German speaking Mennonite church was attended by the mayor of the city and a bevy of nuns in their habits. He had made it a life practice to aid the needy.
James E Powell
@lowtechcyclist:
I agree with your analysis. The 2010 midterm election marks the death of the Reasonable Republican. Similar to the way that 1994 midterms marked the death of “we agree on goals, but differ on how to get there.”
Because it’s so obvious & central, because it’s been talked about so much, people sometimes want to look away or outright deny what the election of a black president did to the minds of the majority of American white people.
Suzanne
@narya:
Well, yes. But what I’m talking about is the kind of magical thinking that creates a mindset in which someone can convince themselves of what you’re talking about. It’s not limited to abortion or political hot topics. It’s not limited to religious people (though I see it a lot from them). I’m talking about people who literally never think they’ll get sick, or at least won’t ever entertain the idea. That they’ll speed and never get in a wreck.
James E Powell
@oldgold:
In American political code, “limited government” always meant stop giving free stuff to black people and don’t make us live with them or or make our kids go to school with them.
eclare
@Nelle: Oh I’m so sorry. What a wonderful person. Diabetic shocks can mimic a lot of things, and nothing is an excuse.
lowtechcyclist
@kalakal:
Oh, that’s nothing. You want to hear the winner? (At least, I hope there isn’t any idea crazier than this one today.)
The latest thing on the right is that the whole war in Ukraine is an invention, a Wag-the-Dog sort of thing. Elmo’s buddy, catturd, is one of the leading promoters of this bullshit. They claim there’s no video evidence of this war, like there has been of other recent wars. (There’s tons of video. And photographs. And so forth.)
If that turns out to be the runner-up (or worse) for the day, I don’t want to hear what the winner is.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It’s all fun and games until some woman in one’s family dies from septic shock during a miscarriage because some god bothering assholes who think car alternators run on magic, blocked the abortion she need to survive, eh GOPers?
UncleEbeneezer
UncleEbeneezer
zhena gogolia
@UncleEbeneezer: Somebody replies, “Now do Dan Quayle.”
kalakal
@lowtechcyclist: Are they calling their Big Daddy Vladdy a liar? And his representative on earth Tucker?
And who’s going to break the news to Elmo?
Birds aren’t real!
kalakal
@Nelle: Oh how awful. He sounds like he was a wonderful man
evodevo
@Suzanne: Yes…the evangelicals I know definitely think “stuff” will not happen to them. When I mentioned global warming to one woman, her response was “I don’t care. Jeezus will take care of MY family!” Her parents were also talibangelicals, so she was indoctrinated early. Almost all of them think this way, until the bad shit happens to them, and then they whine and moan about it as if they were being singled out for undeserved consequences. They literally DON’T CARE (like Melamine’s jacket said)…
RevRick
@Suzanne: Imagination is the last thing Evangelical churches want since they’re built on the shaky foundation of justifying the unjustifiable. They are, after all, the literal or spiritual descendants of the churches that vociferously defended slavery, advocated for secession and Civil War, and supported Jim Crow laws and its violence. The irony here is that when Northern Baptists first entered the South’s upcountry, they opposed slavery, as their Northern Puritan cousins would increasingly do. But the Southern planter aristocracy would have none of that, so a deal with the Devil was made where the Baptists would shut up about slavery in exchange for full power to police personal behavior. Of course, this “tolerance” became intolerable, until you have Evangelicals making full-throated apologies for slavery. But to do so they had to adopt a frozen interpretation of the Bible across the board.
Which includes views on hierarchy, gender roles, purity and the like. And so they say things like, “The Bible says…” meaning shut up. And in further service to this lack of immigration they scream, “Abortion is murder!”, which of course presupposes a fetus is a person. Which in their eyes has the added bonus of taking that status away from women.
Interestingly, the ancient rabbis never adopted this view, in part because of a weird scenario in Exodus 21, in which a pregnant woman intervenes in a fight between two men and subsequently miscarries. Now, Evangelicals like to argue the technical term for miscarriage isn’t used, so the death penalty for harm must refer to a dead fetus. But here’s where a little imagination helps.
Suppose the woman’s almost at full term. She’ll likely deliver a live baby. But if she’s only at seven months, it’s a dead baby and then the death penalty? The penalty is worse for a less-developed fetus? Reason says this is backwards, so the references to harm must refer to the mother-to-be. Extending this logic further, the rabbis concluded that abortion was mandatory in cases where the woman’s life was in danger. The life of the one who is, trumps the life of the one who might be.
OverTwistWillie
This post 19th amendment progressivism is so troubling. Can’t we just throw up some bull about Sherman Anti-trust and Walmart, or whatever, so as to transform the rurals of our imagination into Trotskyites?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Big part of it was evolution was being used as the justification for eugenics. The modern creationist use the same argument that evolutionary theory de-sanctifies human life and leads to drugs, rock in roll, model railroading, cross dressing, union membership, poverty, uppity women, racism, altruism, teen pregnancies and other social horrors. Once as a tragedy, second time as a farce.
Kirk Spencer
@James E Powell:
To that end I’ve been wondering what we will see when we finally get a female president.
I think we’ll see more negative reaction than we did with a black man. Thing is that Obama’s experience gives all an idea what we need to prepare for .
Jackie
Apparently ALL news outlets are demanding McCarthy share J6 Capitol Hill footage.
Can’t wait to see his justification to deny access.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jackie:
Because fuck you, that’s why.
Barbara
@eclare: Well, even elderly drunks shouldn’t be shunted aside like that.
Peke Daddy
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Also being used to bolster economic Darwinism, per Herbert Spencer. Bryan strongly opposed it, the “Cross of Gold” speech was a prime example of that.
davecb
@OzarkHillbilly, @Soprano2:
Were I a woman, I might not want to go into a place with a partially-dressed man collapsed on the floor. I think I’d call 911 or at least my boss for advice
narya
@Suzanne: Yeah . . . I cannot quite wrap my head around it, tbh. It’s like they create a reality in their head and then stick to it, regardless of any evidence that would counter it, and they no-true-scotsman their way out of any such evidence.
Lulymay
@Anne Laurie: Bingo!!!
Sure Lurkalot
@James E Powell:
Hell yes. And Obama’s re-election was the last frontier of the already rock bottom level of reason most of them tenuously held on to.
UncleEbeneezer
@zhena gogolia: Might happen. Worth trying to get Pence’s direct testimony first, but if that takes too long, no reason not to go to Quayle.
Bill Arnold
@JWR:
Hah. I was replying to “Rep. Lance Gooden of Texas””s tweet on the matter of Judy Chu, and it was deleted right while I was composing the reply. Mr. Lance Gooden,, anti-American POS, must be feeling some heat.
Manyakitty
@Baud: one hopes they personally experience the wages of their sins. 😐
dmsilev
@Jackie: If nothing else, can’t the Senate give the same access?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@JWR: @Bill Arnold: I think Rep Gooden’s every public utterance is going to come under scrutiny in the next few days, and odds are things are going to get uncomfortable for him
UncleEbeneezer
@James E Powell: Absolutely. The book I’m reading, Mothers of Massive Resistance really brings this home as you watch organizations of white women (United Daughters of the Confederacy, Daughters of American Revolution, Pro-America etc.) of continually shifting their slogans (Parental Choice, Christian Nation, Local Control, Small Govt, Traditional Values, States’ Rights etc.) but always in the goal of maintaining racial segregation of schools and preventing the expansion of rights for Black People. Tellingly, these organizations/campaigns always had support from and even worked with, the KKK.
Redshift
@UncleEbeneezer:
Unfortunately, there is. Pence is a witness, Quayle is hearsay. His testimony wouldn’t add anything to what they’ve got from the Pence aides.
More likely, of the Pence challenges don’t get knocked down quickly, they’ll agree to exclude questions about conversations when he was at the Capitol. There’s no way he’ll get a speech or debate exemption for talking about the count at other times.
Omnes Omnibus
@Redshift:
Pence’s statements to Quayle could qualify under a couple of hearsay exceptions.
James E Powell
@UncleEbeneezer:
In some places they were probably the same people.
James E Powell
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s been a long time since I checked, but I think hearsay is admissible in federal grand jury proceedings.
Redshift
@lowtechcyclist: I agree that was a tipping point, and Obama’s election was a big shock to their system, but a lot of it was also a slow progression. They used to be mostly cynical manipulators (I always remember Reagan telling the so-called March for Life “I am with you”… remotely, while sitting out of sight inside the White House a block away), but the younger people they inspired to run were true believers. And then, I think, the manipulators started realizing they could have more money and influence (which is all they cared about) outside of government, like DeMint moving to Heritage, and they abandoned government to their nutcase heirs.
Redshift
@James E Powell: I wasn’t saying it’s not admissible, I was saying it’s not a substitute for Pence’s testimony because it’s not stronger than evidence they already have.
Jim Appleton
Proudly claiming part of the tail end of this thread …
Matt McIrvin
@Kirk Spencer: The Democrats nominating Hillary Clinton seems to have been a berzerk button for a lot of people, and not just Republicans.
Many will argue, this wasn’t just any woman, it was that woman. But the thing is, the hate-cult around Hillary Clinton started with people who were shocked by her overt feminism and political ambition. A political wife wasn’t supposed to act like that; it made her Lady Macbeth. I do think many in younger generations were brought up absorbing that hate without really realizing where it originally came from
I’m also struck by how much of the anti-Hillary rhetoric just got shifted wholesale to attacking Kamala Harris.