As you’re doubtless aware, the United States Supreme Court is hearing arguments in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case right now. If you’re an egg-bearer, chances are the court’s religious fanatics will remove your constitutional right to bodily autonomy this term.
My guess is they’ll strike down the insane Texas pregnancy bounty hunter law (which is in effect right now and drastically altering real people’s lives in all kinds of ways) as a ruse to make a decision to uphold the Mississippi law seem more “moderate.” This court’s conservative fanatics are exquisitely sensitive to suggestions that they’re activists who are using raw judicial power to overturn precedent when it benefits Republicans and drive an unpopular conservative agenda.
I look forward to Justice Sotomayor’s fiery dissent.
Open thread.
Leto
Her questioning is so sharp. Personally don’t think the responses from the MS SG were that great, but the crazies hold the court so we’ll see.
Another Scott
Someone made the point on Twitter yesterday (or so) that it seems very strange that they’re taking so long to strike down the obviously unconstitutional Texas law. Maybe they are trying to find a way to split the baby as you say. This is so horrible – 5-6 people should not have so much power to over-rule federal laws and decades of settled laws to punish people for political power. (The whole purpose of the federal constitution – it says so right at the beginning – is to “promote the general welfare for ourselves and our posterity” – not to stand on the neck of progress.)
Grr…
Fight for 15!!11
Cheers,
Scott.
Litlebritdifrnt
Charles Pierce is live tweeting the arguments. Justice Sotomayor has crushed her teeth down to the bone (according to Charles).
sixthdoctor
So, assuming the worst, abortion tourism is going to be a thing, isn’t it? I imagine that there will be groups fundraising and arranging transportation for poorer women this time next year, and that’ll just be another vector for right wing harassment and terror attacks.
Also imagining clinics popping up just over state lines and the harassment they’ll face. Scary times.
debit
I would like any Bernie bro who said that Hillary would be as bad, if not worse, than Trump to stand up and take a bow.
ETA: so I can kick them in the nuts. Metaphorically speaking.
ETA2: No, fuck it, I really would do it live and in person, as hard as I could.
Jeffro
My guess is they’ll strike down the insane Texas pregnancy bounty hunter law (which is in effect right now and drastically altering real people’s lives in all kinds of ways) as a ruse to make a decision to uphold the Mississippi law seem more “moderate.”
I think that’s a good guess.
Meanwhile, Bret Stephens would like us all to pipe down and ‘end the Covid blame game‘.
“both sides” doesn’t get any better than thi
Be careful…you’ll roll your eyes so hard, they might get stuck that way…
Brachiator
Is the audio of the arguments available somewhere?
Okay. Yes.
A number of places, including here.
Leto
@Brachiator: I know I’m interested in what all of our BJ legal eagles will have to say about the arguments.
cain
@Jeffro: Fuck this guy – has he not seen the insane shit coming out of the mouth of the GOPs, and he wants to both sides this?
We need to find a way to get rid of the profit motive for 24 hour news. It’s destroying everything.
marcopolo
Just listening to Sotomayor, I am already hearing her dissent.
And yes, abortion will be legal in blue states & illegal in red. I live in MO & imagine a few years from now getting an abortion will be a little like how we get MJ (for me edibles) now—drive across the river to IL.
I wish running on the issue of body autonomy was as good at motivating voters on the left as it appears protecting clumps of cells is for the right.
Matt McIrvin
@Jeffro: Some people want not to be shot, and some people want to shoot them. Differences of needs and opinions!
JPL
Right to privacy.. What’s next for these asshole
Red states will charge those that cross state lines for an abortion with murder
Matt McIrvin
@marcopolo: I find it hard to believe there won’t be a federal abortion ban once they get the legislative wherewithal. The law against intact dilation & extraction is evidence that the Republicans will definitely do it when they can.
VeniceRiley
IT IS WEDDING DAY!
I’m getting hitched today. Nothing can rui …
Hey why don’t I just check Ballon Juice real quick and ….
JPL
@VeniceRiley: congrats
Kay
Interesting approach in a country that is absolutely backward compared to other developed countries in any support of “work and family”.
Another lurch backward for the US compared to the rest of the world when they put religious extremists in charge of maternal health and pregnancy. We still won’t have any national public policy to support women and families, but now we’ll have the religious police force overseeing/directing medical care for all pregnant women.
Benw
@VeniceRiley: ha, congrats!
Betty Cracker
@Jeffro: I saw that this morning and wanted to punch that motherfucker through the screen. It’s true that the VIRUS is unpredictable. It’s true that even leaders who behaved responsibly (i.e., making decisions with public health rather than political outcomes in mind) and followed the science see setbacks. Covid is a motherfucker, no argument there.
I also believe there are grounds for good-faith debate on mitigation measures, and in hindsight, some well-meaning people made mistakes. But those debates almost always took place outside the Republican Party, which has demagogued this issue relentlessly and caused tens of thousands of needless deaths.
Move on? Fuck. That. Noise.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Jesus Tap-Dancing Christ.
@VeniceRiley: Congrats!
Kay
Just so we’re clear on the context in which this new pregnancy police force is being established:The
We don’t do anything to improve our rock bottom international standing on maternal health. Instead we’ve decided to put a whole new pregnancy regulation and oversight scheme in, drafted and implimented by religious extremists.
Leto
Justice I LOVE BEER talking about how the Court overrules precedent all the time. Tee’ing it up.
Brachiator
@Jeffro:
Ha! You are so right.
This guy is flinging bullshit so hard…
stinger
@VeniceRiley: Congratulations anyway!
Soprano2
@sixthdoctor: We have that already in MO; there is a clinic a few miles from St. Louis in Illinois, and I think there is a clinic in Kansas City, KS. After the radical 6 get done the only state around MO where abortion will still be legal is probably Illinois. It’s going to be tragic.
cassandra
@Matt McIrvin: If the shooters have deeply held beliefs that the other people need to be shot, I think we have to respect that.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: As long as white women keeping voting Republican, the state of affairs is not going to change. Here’s hoping that the erosion of reproductive rights is what finally wakes them up.
Soprano2
One reason is because evidently this issue isn’t motivating for men, so on our side only half are motivated by it to begin with.
Brachiator
I pretty much hate Justice Kavanaugh.
He is laying out the “logic” for overturning Roe. The idea is that the Court should be neutral with respect to pro-life or pro-abortion and just leave it to the states.
Of course, such a view contradicts the conservative fantasy that the fetus is somehow super-sacred.
Justice Barrett doesn’t care about the viability line being a workable framework.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
It’s Justice Barrett’s argument. She makes it in her stump speeches. She uses herself as the example, because as we all know a college professor at a prestigious university is representative of the work life of most women.
She has parental leave, along with an expensive education and financial security. Financial security for life, now, given her appointment. What, other people don’t? My stars, who knew!
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: It won’t, though, because they believe that they will still be able to get abortions when they need one. It’s only those dirty sluts who are irresponsible who won’t be able to get out of taking responsibility for their bad behavior who won’t be able to get abortions anymore. These people really, really believe that most of the women who get abortions are between the ages of 16-30 and unmarried. In their world, married women and younger children who need abortions just don’t exist.
Tazj
@marcopolo: Sadly so many people will think that overturning Roe will be perfectly reasonable too. Well, it’s still legal in some states so just go there, as if that weren’t very difficult or impossible for some people. Or asking why they didn’t they avoid all this in the first place, callously dismissing rape, medical issues of pregnancy and bodily autonomy.
According to ACB, since there are places where women can relinquish custody of their infants without fear of being incarcerated, women can’t claim parenthood as a burden. She has claimed that the majority of the briefs for the clinics have focused on parenthood as an undue burden and not pregnancy so I guess she thinks all pregnancies are no risk.
Stewart thinks that because abortion is still being litigated years later and causes great harm we should let the people decide. I wonder how much he’d like it if the people had power over his body and medical decisions.
SFAW
@Jeffro:
Well, Bart, you fucking moron, YOUR partisan opponents are Democrats, and “bad faith or recklessness or greed” is/are not part of their ethos, vis-a-vis COVID and vaccination. So, yeah, imputing any of those to Dems (re: COVID) is a complete lie.
But MY partisan opponents are a different story, and I’ll impute every bad thing to them, because bad faith, recklessness, greed, and lying are part-and-parcel of the “ethos” of the Party of Traitors.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
Agreed. This is brand new. The United States has never had an elaborate code regulating all stages of pregnancy and trumping medical analysis and advice. It’s a new world for pregnant women- all pregnant women.
If higher income women think these state codes aren’t going to impact pregnancy care, they are mistaken. It’s already changed in Texas. It’ll be you, the physician or health care provider and your furthest Right state representative in the examining room. The state representative’s opinions on your medical care trump yours and the physicians.
They send high risk that might end in termination them out of state now in Texas. Women better get used to traveling, because Texas is going to be surrounded by a whole lot of ground before they get to a state that lets the physician decide.
Soprano2
Those white women who aren’t motivated by the loss of the right to an abortion also don’t believe these people will go after contraception, even though they’ve been saying it out loud for 20 years! For God’s sake, TFG’s administration had a woman in HHS who believes that birth control is bad for women! They haven’t been secret about their desire to get rid of pretty much all hormonal birth control under the fantasy that it causes abortions. Can’t wait for the wealthy white women in MO to suddenly find out they can’t get an IUD from any doctor in MO because the (mostly old men) in the state legislature made them illegal under the theory that they might cause an abortion.
FelonyGovt
@VeniceRiley: Congratulations!
SFAW
@schrodingers_cat:
And I’m hoping that I win Powerball. Yours has a higher likelihood of success, but not as much as we’d like, unfortunately. This has been coming for 20 years, and it’s been relatively obvious, and yet here we are.
Now, when Griswold get struck down (or equivalent), that may change the dynamic sufficiently. But I think Gilead is more likely than a turn to liberal policies.
Edmund Dantes
@Betty Cracker: it also ignores that one side was actually perfectly happy to let it run rampant in “blue” states. Idiots actually thought it would only be as blue state problem.
Leto
Alito going the route I thought they might: Plessy v Ferguson was wrong, was the law of the land for 60-70 years, built on bad precedent, so I’m sure you’ll understand why we’re going to strike the entire thing down…
Nobody in particular
Racism is a social construct. So is law, unless you are a Borkean and believe in woo like Natural Law. People should realize these facts, but can’t. We make them up: Social Constructs. Some history on abortion in early America indicates this is largely a matter of religion, something else humans contrived. Catholics have never approved. No surprise there. As you can see, slaves were never allowed autonomy in this regard – or any other. I don’t think the fetus cares one way or another. Alito is an idiot. Most of them are. If I knew what it was going to be like, I’d have taken a rain check or opted for a stillbirth. No wonder we scream after birth. When does life begin? As of now, it seems billions of years ago and even before the rocky planets like earth formed.
Personhood generally comes later in life. About 70.
This is a matter of Constitutions. When I first came across Dr. Silverman at the crazy colonel’s blog he was trying to find a specific quote of Thomas Jefferson’s. I knew right away which quote he was seeking. It happens to be inscribed on the 4th Panel at Monticello. Over the years and after my own research it made me realize what a progressive and visionary Jefferson really was. So much so they contrived to send him to France to get him out of the way during the work on the new constitution. To some on the left, he was a fascist, slave-owning White Devil. Some folks can’t help but make judgments on little or no information.
And if stare decisis is stuck down, it just comes back to bite them in the future – if we have one. It will bite us all.
Full text of the letter from which it derived.
At issue was the Constitution of Virginia but it could have been any law or constitution. At that time people may not have had the perspective we have today. I imagine Jefferson believed his view to be the natural way of progress. Today we realize it is much more like a yoyo. It ebbs and flows. And he had such faith based on his own mind. He was a polymath. Most humans are mere troglodytes. I was until about 65. Kavanaugh really should be working at a 7-11.
Sure Lurkalot
@VeniceRiley: Congratulations to you! 12121.Great choice!
Kay
@Soprano2:
It isn’t just “seeking an abortion” though. The laws profoundly impact high risk pregnancy care. If life begins at conception all medical care delivered to pregnant where the fetus is at risk becomes a balancing act. She has to be at death’s door in Texas before the medical analysis of termination can even begin.
In the countries who have liberalized abortion they never do it because of “abortion”. They do it because women die in childbirth. What anti-abortion people are demanding is that you trust them to evaluate your condition and then make a choice – baby or mother. Me personally? I don’t trust them as far as I can throw them. I know which one they’ll choose.
lee
The one thing that somewhat gives me a glimmer of hope is that there are more online options for women to get medically induced abortions.
Brachiator
@Tazj:
When my family moved to California in the 60s, someone once pointed out some building run by the Catholic Church. They claimed that this used to be a place where respectable middle class white families from the East and mid-West sent their daughters to have babies in secret. They then returned home scandal free.
Some people want to return to this hypocrisy, which would be one result of overturning Roe.
Kay
@SFAW:
I think liberals and Democrats have to stop thinking of “women” as a political entity in any kind of cohesive or effective way – it simply doesn’t happen. As long as I’ve been an adult female I have been told that this or that issue would create that kind of solidarity and it has never happened.
The United States has almost no “family” public policy nationally. It’s not a mystery why we have no family leave or childcare or other public supports for “families”. It simply isn’t a priority in this country and we have fallen decades behind other developed countries in providing it. What’s the last advance we made in women’s rights in the US? The Violence Against Women Act? That was almost 30 years ago.
Tazj
@Kay: Yes, Ireland comes to mind right away as a country that changed its abortion laws in response to the unnecessary and tragic death of a pregnant woman.
Brachiator
@Nobody in particular:
Wait. You mean that Jefferson did not own slaves, and did not rape at least one of them? Tell me more.
Also, I always thought that Jefferson had been sent to Paris before plans for the Constitutional Convention had been developed. Shays Rebellion of August 1786 heightened the desire to deal with the inadequacies of the previous Articles which had defined the federal government.
SiubhanDuinne
@VeniceRiley:
Illegitimi non carborundum! This is your day, and your love’s. Enjoy it, congratulations, and best wishes!
Leto
@sixthdoctor: @Soprano2: An article from Politico talking about the future moving foward in a post Roe world, but also talking about the real world ramifications of the clinics that do perform abortion and the surge they’ve seen in the past few months, and how they’re barely coping.
‘A post-Roe strategy’: The next phase of the abortion fight has already begun
Kay
I just want to put a marker down right now. When they overturn Roe we’ll be lectured by media on how it doesn’t matter and how the Right will show lots and lots of restraint and how we still have elections and blue states are safe anyway. These are the same people who lectured us that Roe wasn’t at real risk. They’re always wrong. They consistently under-estimate the far Right in this country and have for decades. I guess it makes them feel better but it isn’t true and rational people had no reason at all to believe it. They’re drafting the patronizing, soothing minimizations right now. Expect a flood. They’ll be as wrong this time as they always are.
Soprano2
@Kay: I agree with you on this. I think the anti-abortion people actually have no idea of all the ramifications of what they want. There will be a woman who dies of an ectopic pregnancy because the state where she lives won’t allow an abortion as long as a “heartbeat” can be heard, just like what happened in Ireland. The (mostly) men who write these laws have no idea of all the ramifications of the things they think should be illegal.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: Jefferson wasn’t a fascist because that whole complex of ideas didn’t exist. He was a hardcore racist, a slaveowner and a rapist by any coherent notion of consent, he became President through gross constitutional malfunction, and his concept of government was a mixture of what we’d call liberal and reactionary ideas that doesn’t map directly onto anything modern.
But some of the liberal ideas now read as incredibly far-seeing, as does his prediction that slavery was eventually going to bite the United States in the ass. It’s too bad he couldn’t accept all of these ideas’ logical consequences. But human beings rarely can.
Kay
@Tazj:
Life begins at conception. Consider that. It’s a profound and radical change and it impacts every single pregnant woman and everyone who may become pregnant. Of course medical care will change. It has to. It already has in Texas.
Leto
@lee: They’re already going after that, with several R states banning it.
Soprano2
@Kay: They’ll scold anyone who theorizes that conservatives will go after lots of different kinds of contraceptives under the fantasy that they cause abortions, even though they’ve been saying exactly that for decades! It’ll be all “Well you know they’d never actually do that, even though they talk about it, what are you worrying your silly little head over”, which is exactly what they said about abortion 20 years ago and ever since.
Soprano2
@Kay: There will have to be a whole new area of law about whose life is more important, the woman or the fetus. This will all have to be litigated a lot more than it already has. There will be lawyers arguing that the life of the fetus is more important than the woman’s life, a lot more than there are now. It’ll be extremely icky.
Nobody in particular
@Brachiator:
You are so predictable. He also put full manumission in the original draft of the DOI. Other people made him take it out.
You disappoint. I come here because in my estimation the commenters here are more independent minded. You know another word that is not in the Constitution? Privacy.
In Jefferson’s time, a house [slave] was asleep at the foot of the Jeffersons marital bed while they were bumping uglies.
Your concept of privacy didn’t exist yet. Jefferson is not your enemy. He is not the clear and present danger. That’s knee-jerk.
TheTruffle
Maybe it’s time to codify abortion rights at the federal level.
Kay
@Soprano2:
I think it goes even further than that, but we’ll see. Law development doesn’t operate in neat little silos. If the idea behind a state code is “life begins at conception” that’s a radically different grounding for a state code. It’s a profound change. Whether it impacts the whole code is the only question, whether it impacts pregnancy is a given.
Roe is a fence. It says “here, the state may not go”. They’re taking down the fence. The whole area is now open.
thalarctosMaritimus
@schrodingers_cat: Co-signed, sadly.
WaterGirl
@VeniceRiley: The big day!!! So happy for you both! You have waited a long time for this and you handled it with grace.
All the best to both of you.
Jeffro
@cain:
@Matt McIrvin:
@Betty Cracker: one thing Stephens could say, and he wouldn’t be lying for once, is that the GQP has accomplished its post-trumpov mission: kneecap the pandemic recovery to the extent that he’s even able to try to make this kind of both-sides BS argument
Ella in New Mexico
@Kay: But don’t you know, if you didn’t “work” as hard as she did, you apparently need to “work harder” to achieve and get the kind of workplace she has enjoyed.
Because everyone actually lived in a house growing up, had rich, educated parents and could go to law school so we’re all equal here, its just laziness on our parts we aren’t her.
Nobody in particular
@Jeffro:
This is Civil War in the 21st century. It’s called Democracy. It is why the framers were very ambivalent about democracy, the apportionment of representation in a Republic. Nobody wants to acknowledge this in general terms. I view it as an existential threat. I understand Dr. Silverman’s frustration. I have come to realize that it is best to just let it be. I firmly believe we are the Third Chimpanzee. I am one of those troglodytes. “Woke.” Dr. Zaius maybe.
MazeDancer
@VeniceRiley: Much happiness to You and Your Soon-to-Be-Spouse!
The Truffle
@Nobody in particular: Wow. Defeatism has hit BJ?
Nobody in particular
@Kay:
That’s the wrong question. Reproduction begins at conception. Life began billions of years ago. When legal personhood attaches to the fetus is the legal issue. Otherwise, were are headed for Sharia Law.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
Jefferson did everything he could to preserve slavery. He was supposedly pro-liberty, but refused to assist Haiti in securing their liberty. He even backed Napoleon’s efforts to re-establish slavery in that country.
And the only slaves he freed in his lifetime were those who were probably his children.
Brachiator
@Nobody in particular:
Dr. Zaius was an orangutan.
Ya gotta keep your primates straight.
Mary G
@VeniceRiley: Don’t let the fuckers bring you down – CELEBRATE
?❣???
New Deal democrat
@Kay:
*Never* in over 225 years of jurisprudence has the Supreme Court taken away a constitutional right that millions of people have had, let alone one they thought they had for the past 50 years.
The blowback from this will be thermonuclear, on the order of probably nothing since Dred Scot.
stinger
@Soprano2:
This. They are slutty sluts wanting to have a good time without paying for it. I’ve heard this attitude from so many people.
The underlying belief, of course, is that having sex is a sin, and a child is a woman’s just punishment.
I don’t know the statistics, but would be willing to bet that most women seeking abortion are married and that many of them already have children.
Brachiator
@New Deal democrat:
I want to see the Democrats drive this point home, just as clearly as you have noted it here.
New Deal democrat
@Another Scott:
“This is so horrible – 5-6 people should not have so much power to over-rule federal laws and decades of settled laws to punish people for political power.”
James Madison agreed with you. Here’s what he wrote only a few years after the Constitution was enacted, advocating for a Legislative “Council of Revision”:
Madison proposed that, following an intervening election, the Congress could override an adverse Supreme Court decision by a supermajority vote of 2/3’s or 3/4’s of both Houses, saying
There was also an anti-Federalist named “Brutus” who foresaw exactly this problem with raw, supreme judicial power.
Betty
@sixthdoctor: As much as possible, safe options that don’t require surgical intervention will have to be further developed and promoted. There will be still be problems for those whose pregnancies go wrong later on and doctors can’t be sure they are life threatening. Doctors in Texas are already facing this.
Librarian
Yes, this is unprecedented. The Supreme Court has never taken away a constitutional right before. We’re used to the court giving people rights, not taking them away. This is uncharted territory. Who knows what the blowback will be when people realize what the court has done.
lowtechcyclist
@Jeffro:
[Note: Jeffro quoted Bret Stephens, and this is from that quote. Needless to say, it doesn’t reflect Jeffro’s beliefs – quite the opposite, I’m sure – and the vitriol in my response is aimed straight at Stephens, and definitely not at Jeffro. Wanted to avoid any confusion on that point.]
Or membership in Tribe ‘Fuck You.’
Dear “check out the big brain on” Bret: we tried being nice, we tried being patient, we tried being reasonable. Now we’re fucking fed up with plague rats. We should have been done with Covid already, here in the U.S.A., but because people are listening to Fucker Carlson and evangelical preachers, the plague isn’t done with us.
Their ‘needs and ideas that differ’ are causing people to die – and not just members of their own tribe, either, but also people who couldn’t get medical care because fucking anti-vaxxers with Covid were taking up all the beds. If your differing needs and ideas are killing other people, then maybe you and your differing needs and ideas should be incarcerated somewhere.
Fuck you, Bret Stephens, and the horse you rode in on.
stinger
@lowtechcyclist: I have a deep-seated belief. The belief that women are people. People who, like male people, have the right to bodily autonomy. Why doesn’t my deep-seated belief get parity with others’?
J R in WV
@Betty Cracker:
Fixed that number of needless, useless deaths thingy for you. Wearing masks universally may have saved the vast majority of those deaths!
Could be a million dead so far, we’ll never know exactly, pols have lied continuously about the death toll numbers! Only close number will be from comparing the death totals from 2017, 2018, 2019 with the totals from 2020 and 2021. The excess will be close to the total COVID death toll.
Glad Former Gov Cuomo is outta there, and his shitty brother too! He lied about COVID casualty numbers as well as Rs did!
J R in WV
@VeniceRiley:
And congratulations from WV also too ! Hurray !!!!
Nobody in particular
@Brachiator:
And you gotta keep your history right. Only a fool would judge a man by the shoes that you yourself can never walk in – without a time machine. The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there, and you’ve never been there.
lowtechcyclist
I respect what you’re trying to say here, but I will confess that the whole phraseology of “when does life begin?” has been driving me nuts for decades now.
The egg is alive, the sperm is alive, the fertilized egg is alive. That’s always been so. And still shouldn’t mean anything.
Nobody in particular
@Brachiator:
This is quite a “fantabulous” statement. Care to provide irrefutable evidence? Or is it just a “biased” opinion? It does not ring true on any level. How many letters of his have you poured over for 30 years? I read his mail. I know the man. This is a result of Beard’s “progressive” history narrative that was refuted by later historians. Forrest McDonald, for instance. Beard’s research was faulty.
J R in WV
@Kay:
And no matter which the RWNJs choose, mostly what they will get is both a dead or seriously disabled infant AND a dead woman who won’t ever be a mother, being deceased.
And they won’t spend a red cent on care for the disabled infant, either, will they!?!?
Nobody in particular
@lowtechcyclist:
Reproduction [of life] begins at conception. Period. Life began long ago, as you astutely observed. The court does not do science well. Never has. And I smell religion sneaking into the constitution. Legal personhood attaches to the developing fetus when, is the question at issue.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: Jefferson did push through the Northwest Terrotories Ordinance. That was probably the most consequential acheivement under the Article of Confederacy, and it prohibited slavery north of the Ohio River.
Another Scott
@New Deal democrat: Excellent. Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
lowtechcyclist
@J R in WV:
Here’s a link for you. There’s a very nice table if you scroll a little way down that gives the deaths, year by year, from 2015 through 2020.
Total U.S. deaths from all causes in:
2015: 2,712,630
2019: 2,854,838
2020: 3,358,814
So basically, deaths per year were increasing at the rate of 35-36K deaths per year between 2015 and 2019. Then, boom, they increase by half a million between 2019 and 2020.
Only about 345,000 of those 2020 deaths had been attributed to Covid-19.
Nobody in particular
@Geminid:
And his pleas to Jackson over the trail of tears went unheeded. He’s not the enemy, he’s the salvation, but the idiots on the right who continuously misquote him, (and that includes pols), are glad about the left’s unwarranted animus towards him. Silly really. And some kids wanted to ban the teaching of Aristotle and any white man over 2000 years old. Even St. Augustine. He was black. History is hard. This just in: First OMICRON detected at UCSF
catholicherald.co.uk/was-st-augustine-black/
Another Scott
@lowtechcyclist: Yup.
And bringing the “soul” or “heartbeat” or similar things into it doesn’t add any clarity. What matters is (IMHO):
and a few other things, but those are two big ones.
Cheers,
Scott.
burnspbesq
@JPL:
What makes you think that blue states will extradite? The full faith and credit implications are, to say the least, interesting.
Brachiator
@Nobody in particular:
Here is the thing. You can try to deal with what we all know about Jefferson, which you have not done.
But attacking me personally is a waste of time and kinda makes you look desperate and foolish.
Nobody in particular
@Brachiator:
And Brach, Orangutan means wise old man of the jungle. I’m Red Rangutan. Touche
James E Powell
@debit:
I’d want to start with the Naderites & supposedly pro-choice Tote-Baggers who voted for Bush.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@debit:
Thank you. I deleted a sarcastic “Don’t try to blackmail me with the Supreme Court!” as the first comment in this thread, because a lot of people here think 2016 is now irrelevant, and refuse to see the anti-Democratic Left for what it is (even though a lot of them were saying versions of the same thing in 2020)
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
To be fair, a lot of these people saw the light in 2020 and voted for Biden. Third party voting for Trump, agitation from the lunatic Left, etc., was much less than in 2016.
Nobody in particular
@James E Powell:
Naderites at least have an affinity with the sane people. The results of Duverger’s Law tend to make the low information voter adopt a “pox on both houses” stance. This is a mistake. Duverger is an example of the law of unintended consequences. The very thing the founders hoped to avoid, factionalism, was what happened. It is mainly how we conduct our elections. And the constitution is mute on this subject with two obvious exceptions: President and Senate. It’s left up to the states.
Duverger’s Law of Two-Party Domination
Nobody in particular
@Brachiator:
I never attacked you personally. I am naturally this way, gruff. Just provide me coherent evidence and narrative that “Jefferson did everything in his power” to preserve slavery, which is patently untrue. I might say this comment is “ad hominem” but my skin is thicker than that. In fact, I prefer to be the fool, as opposed to the idiot.
It’s a personal choice.
Brachiator
@Nobody in particular:
More just “person of the forest.”
And Dr Zaius was a blind, stubborn being determined to hide from the truth.
ETA: I have been fortunate enough to have had a pretty good conversation with Birute Galdikas about orangutans and other primates. Truly fascinating and enlightening.
Nobody in particular
@Brachiator:
That was an offhanded remark that you seem obsessed with. It was in jest, yet you find it worthy of scrutiny. Maybe you should read his massive body of writing, particularly the letters. Then draw your own conclusions. That’s what I do.
Wise old man of the jungle
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Brachiator: A lot of people saw teh light, a lot of people were still mis-reading hatred of Hillary Clinton as support for the Sage of Burlington, and even after 2020, a lot of those cultists flocked to Ohio to promote Bowl-Of-Shit Turner, and a lot of people here remain infatuated with those cultists for… reasons.
Miss Bianca
@Soprano2:
That has historically, and for all I know still is, the official position of the Catholic Church. It’s amazing how the Catholic Church, for all this country’s protested horror of Papism, has ended up dictating the far right’s position on abortion and birth control through evangelicals’ determination to strike a devil’s bargain with them to gain control of the GOP.
Nobody in particular
@stinger:
Ashley Montagu went farther than that over 50 years ago.
Being an Orangutan, it is unfair to consider me in comparison.
mrmoshpotato
@debit:
Where’s the line form?
Nobody in particular
@mrmoshpotato:
All they had to do was vote for him in the primary, then pivot to the nominee. None of them did, because they are Low Information Voters. Stupid.
Nobody in particular
@Brachiator:
On this, we can agree. With a passion reserved for entitled rich white punks who should get curb stomped.
Kay
@J R in WV:
It isn’t that so much for me- my daughter and I talk about how it is difficult to describe the anger we have about it. It’s a loss of autonomy and agency, and automony and agency are really, really important to me. Perhaps unsurprisingly I raised kids who give those a high value too.
When my daughter was in high school she watched part of a House hearing on birth control in Obamacare. Maybe you remember it. People joked about it- “the clerics court”- they had religious people lined up in a row, opining on birth control. She was sputtering mad in a way I recognize. “Why are they… TALKING about us?”
She sees it as intrusive, as a threat to her automony and agency as a person. It’s a feeling of being squeezed, like claustrophobia or suffocation but obviously not that extreme. We’re deeply uncomfortable with it, in ways that go beyond “abortion”. She was a really cute kid and tiny, so idiot not- perceptive people would scoop her up sometimes- not knowing that she’s fucking fierce and she wants to walk BY HERSELF- and I would jump in- “put her down”, just marveling that they didn’t read her face enough to know she would be offended! It’s like that.
debbie
@Leto:
I thought Kagan was pretty sharp too.
Tehanu
At least you’re keeping your head up. I just want to curl into a ball and shut it all out. I’m finding it very hard to even think about this crap.