Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

We do not need to pander to people who do not like what we stand for.

Let there be snark.

Second rate reporter says what?

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

In my day, never was longer.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

“Alexa, change the president.”

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

I don’t recall signing up for living in a dystopian sci-fi novel.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

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War for Ukraine Day 792: ATACMS! About Damn Time

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(Image by NEIVANMADE)

Apparently President Biden directed that ATACMS be sent to Ukraine about two months ago.

What we have to wait to find out is what “inside Ukrainian sovereign territory” means. Does it include Russian occupied Crimea? If so, does it include the Kerch strait bridge?

As we’ve discussed, Putin’s and Russia’s intention is to destroy as much of Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure before the US aid arrives over the next couple of weeks.

Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.

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Newsworthy on this Wednesday Afternoon

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A few quick things from me, now back to work.

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Update: mistermix and I posted within 2 minutes of each other, so I pulled mine for awhile. I see that he covered the AZ 1864 bill, too, but I’m leaving that in anyway.

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Let’s Solicit Comments from People With No Skin in the Game

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Let's Solicit Comments from People With No Skin in the Game

The GOP-controlled Arizona House just voted to repeal the 1864 total abortion ban and replace it with a 15-week abortion ban.  It looks like the GOP-controlled Senate will also pass the bill, and Gov. Katie Hobbs says, basically, “hurry the fuck up so I can sign the bill,” so it will probably be law before the 1864 ban could go into effect in June.

The Washington Post helpfully solicited comment [gift link] from a couple of anti-abortion activists:

Caroline Helton, a 64-year-old from Mesa, said she was deeply concerned about a referendum likely to appear on the ballot in November that would protect abortion until the point of viability, or around 24 weeks.

“I’m not completely antiabortion, but they have gone too far,” said Helton, who hopes her legislators will ultimately agree to preserve the 15-week law that is currently in effect.

Deborah Tyler, 71, said she is “conflicted” about the 1864 abortion ban, in part because it does not include exceptions for rape and incest. “I don’t know,” said Tyler, who lives in the Phoenix area.

“I haven’t drawn a hard line,” she added, standing outside the statehouse last week. “I’m going to listen.”

[emphasis mine]

Here’s the problem with Arizona politics:  there’s an influx of old, white retirees from somewhere else who bring their benighted views with them along with too much furniture and a silly desire to have a green lawn.  These two post-menopausal anti-abortion activists have the absolute luxury to opine on this issue as if it were part of a freshman ethics seminar at the local community college.  Women who can still conceive might possibly consider it differently. Perhaps the Post could have asked a couple of them, but of course they didn’t.

As usual with the big papers’ political reporting on abortion, it’s overweighted with opinions from forced birthers.  That’s because they have strongly-held “beliefs” and therefore those “beliefs” must be front-and-center.  The actual suffering and pain of women is secondary to their bullshit.  I’ll admit that they’ve interviewed a few women who have been deeply hurt by the abortion bans in their state, but in general the ongoing suffering and pain isn’t given the same weight as the purely theoretical suffering of Jesus and friends over the abortions that are still happening.

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Supreme Court Oral Arguments at 10 am – Does Idaho’s Need to Control Women Trump the Existing Law that Guarantees EMTALA

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Should women with pregnancy emergencies in Idaho be left to die rather than receive life-saving emergency treatment?

Should a state law be able to trump a federal law?   (which goes against a very basic legal principle)

That’s really the issue that is in front of the Not-So-Supreme Court today.

First off:  EMTALA stands for Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act

The Biden administration argues that EMTALA – which requires emergency rooms that participate in Medicare to provide “necessary stabilizing treatment” – supersedes an Idaho law that makes it a crime to provide an abortion except in a handful of narrow circumstances, including to save the life of the mother or in cases of rape or incest.

Listen to audio at SCOTUS.

We talked about EMTALA earlier this week:

Not-So-Supreme Court Argument – Spitting Rage

I am not a lawyer, but I am a woman, and as far as I can tell, Idaho’s position is fuck yeah, let the women die.

SCOTUSblog article

An audio feed of  oral arguments is live-streamed on the Court’s website, and the Court posts the audiolater in the day. On the afternoon of each argument, the Court posts transcripts of that day’s arguments.

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Wandering Aimlessly (Open Thread)

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Want to see a Roseate Spoonbill poop?

The bird lets fly at about the 2-second mark, then goes on to preen, search for crawdads or mussels and scare away moorhens who would rather not get spooned. It’s such a pleasure to watch our friend Pinko throughout the day.

Pinko doesn’t wander aimlessly — he or she moves with a sense of purpose, always. But I spent the better part of yesterday wandering, despite starting off with purpose. I was traveling to meet a relative at a new location opened by a sandwich place we used to visit in our college town years ago.

Theoretically, this new location was equidistant between our abodes and closer to both of us than the original location. It didn’t turn out that way for me though because there was a major crash on I-75 that shut down all northbound traffic, so I ended up exiting and taking an alternate route on rural roads.

The destination town is one of those “you can’t get there from here” places — no direct routes because why in the hell would anyone go there? I arrived half an hour late.

It took forever to get back home too. I was unwilling to try the interstate again, so I took a different meandering route home, passing through small towns and driving through vast forests and traversing miles and miles of farmland.

There’s this whole other Florida that most people don’t know exists, and that’s where I was. I’d seen most of it before. At one point, I passed a boat launch on a lake that I remembered visiting with a friend who was a fellow Pizza Hut waitress and lived in a godforsaken town nearby.

Back then, young folks would gather at the boat ramp to drink beer and smoke pot. There wasn’t anything else to do. As I drove past, it looked like there still isn’t anything to do 35 years or so later.

I wondered if my old friend had ever left that town — we lost touch decades ago. My guess is no. I only achieved escape velocity briefly. Sometimes, maybe even most of the time, aimless wandering deposits you back in the place where you started. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

Open thread!

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