US Politics: Don't Panic - Organize

[sologdin]

or we could just as easily regard it as inexorable that, one day, perhaps within my daughter's lifetime, some kindly lefty will reverently inhume the last opponent of the right to terminate.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

14 minutes ago, karaddin said:

The thing that's so glaring for me is that you've got these 4 (and counting) states all "independently" deciding to implement laws so Draconian it amounts to criminalising being a woman. It's just so blatantly coordinated that it's clear the far right have decided they've moved the overton window enough and stacked the judiciary enough to go all in.

They’re coordinating out in the open. I cannot recall her name, but a very rich older Christian women is the one pushing this all over the country. She is so controversial that they had to disinvite her from the Ohio signing ceremony.  

[lokisnow]

14 minutes ago, karaddin said:

The thing that's so glaring for me is that you've got these 4 (and counting) states all "independently" deciding to implement laws so Draconian it amounts to criminalising being a woman. It's just so blatantly coordinated that it's clear the far right have decided they've moved the overton window enough and stacked the judiciary enough to go all in.

Democrat leadership has completely given up on winning red state senate seats, which means republicans have a permanent majority in the senate.

If Thomas retires in a month, they will have a permanent republican majority on the supreme court for the next twenty five years.

A permanent red state majority in the senate, coupled with a permanent republican majority on the supreme court means all of these results are unable to be overturned.

Given that they've computer engineer drawn all the state legislative district boundaries to resist the largest democrat waves in history so that they will have permanent majorities in all state legislatures (and will therefore maintain those majorites for each subsequent redistricting), it is not possible for them to ever lose a state legislature again. Wisconsin had what, 63% of the votes were for democrat state legislators, and they got 39% of the seats? That's the new normal, everywhere all the time.

We can't undo this. they've won and they've written the rules to mean they can never lose.

[sologdin]

They’re coordinating out in the open. I cannot recall her name, but a very rich older Christian women is the one pushing this all over the country. She is so controversial that they had to disinvite her from the Ohio signing ceremony. 

she's a real peach.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

4 minutes ago, sologdin said:

or we could just as easily regard it as inexorable that, one day, perhaps within my daughter's lifetime, some kindly lefty will reverently inhume the last opponent of the right to terminate.

why you there being an optimist?  like, is that allowed?

[lokisnow]

13 hours ago, Triskele said:

There's something about Biden's "this 'middle ground on the environment is BS' line" that's worth addressing.

 

100% we should push for something better, and it is a crisis beyond belief.  But at the same time getting Trump out is so beyond important on this front.  We have to remember that fighting climate change is not just about making sure we don't go over the 2 degree target that we're now almost certainly going to go over.  We have to remember that 3 degrees is a lot worse than 2 but also that 6 is so, so much worse than 3.  

Point being that while I think this is the #1 issue and am considering support Inslee for no other reason I still will not for one moment not support Biden like everything depends on it if it comes down to Biden v. Trump should it come to that.  Slowing the warming down by a disappointing level is so much better than speeding it up as fast as possible, and the latter is what we have with Trump.  

 

ETA:  If this actually happens will we not all owe Joe a special sort of thanks?  

Here's a moderate idea on climate change, make hybrids more or less mandatory and get a whole bunch of low hanging fruit as a result

https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a22815325/2019-ram-1500-etorque-hybrid-pickup-drive/

The big trucks are getting electric motors and hybrid technology to improve their performance and power. Not to be eco, but as a result, they're seeing huge gains in fuel efficiency.

So a moderate choice, don't mandate electric cars. Mandate this technology. or create a rebate for trims with this technology and a fee on all cars that don't have this technology. Require stair step improvements annually to the amount of storage and efficiency gains to qualify for rebates and avoid the penalty. When you've reached a state where all hybrids have x amount of storage, require they have a plug in component as well to charge the storage for all electric driving.

In other words a simple policy tweak to make the high performance hybrids cheaper than the non hybrids and make the low performance non hybrids more expensive than the hybrids, let the market and manufacturers sort out the rest, it'd probably be a quite rapid turnover.

Five years from now, you'd basically be in a state where every vehicle sold was a plug in hybrid with 50 miles of all electric range, and a new vehicle fleet mpg of 50+ Basically cutting gas consumption in half (or more) for the new vehicle fleet. 

That's a moderate choice that just tweaks incentives mildly but changes everything across the fleet without requiring an impossible scaling up in battery production that electrics will require.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

25 minutes ago, sologdin said:

They’re coordinating out in the open. I cannot recall her name, but a very rich older Christian women is the one pushing this all over the country. She is so controversial that they had to disinvite her from the Ohio signing ceremony. 

she's a real peach.

Funny thing is that article is two and half years old. The podcast I listened to about her documented some even crazier stuff she’s been doing since then.  

[Darth Richard II]

When Pat fucking Robertson thinks you've gone too far...you've gone too far.

[Zorral]

This thing in Alabama and Georgia: It feels even more depressing, within the context of The American Slave Coast's content, of the capitalized womb, which was a form, though not organized, still systematic, and entirely conscious, for slave breeding, i.e. non-wage labor, coerced labor and coerced reproduction.

In these places even even miscarriage becomes criminalized because how can we know SHE didn't do something on purpose to cause it, even to provoking the person who beat her up and caused the miscarriage, to do that.

How can these evil criminals get away with ignoring the Supreme Court and laws of the land, without even going to court??????This is how -- yesterday there was a flight on which the passengers were three: Pence, McConnell and the Chief Justice -- the anti-Roe flight.

Get rid of immigrants, forcibly repopulate the 'white' citizenry, and re-capitalize the black womb for labor. The South that isn't a myth has risen again, you betcha. And as before, black women shall carry the heaviest weight. All women, of course, but black women the most. Every woman should be having nightmares. Especially those who live in the ever increasing numbers of health care deserts -- no hospitals, no doctors, no dentists. If the African American woman dies, so what?  If she manages to deliver, they both will probably starve, so what?  If the kid manages to survive -- unpaid labor, the right to abuse, even kill if we wish, and service for anything We White Percentage want, even if we can't afford our own 'servants.'

The 'white women' will be spending all their emotional and intellectual energy on their own abuse, attempting to evade pregnancy and death, poverty and all the rest, and by golly that'll get 'em out of the government, the police, the universities, the law firms, the medical industry, and there's yet a whole 'nother passel of unpaid labor so -- again, immigration not necessary.

We've seen all this before.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

When Pat fucking Robertson thinks you've gone too far...you've gone too far.

Wait until she rallies women to rise up and support laws defining sperm as a person with retroactive application.

We're all going to jail for being genocidal murders. It was a good run mates.....

[lokisnow]

6 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Wait until she rallies women to rise up and support laws defining sperm as a person with retroactive application.

We're all going to jail for being genocidal murders. It was a good run mates.....

so long as Pence is the first masturbator charged and jailed...

[Kalbear]

6 hours ago, karaddin said:

I feel like if there had been this coordinated attack on women's rights a few years ago there would have been pages of outrage and discussion. Have so many stopped posting or is everyone just worn down past the point of commenting by the relentless attacks (which is part of why they do it)?

Yep.

It's also pretty much hopeless as far as countering it. What, are we going to unelect Kavanaugh? 

[karaddin]

5 hours ago, lokisnow said:

We can't undo this. they've won and they've written the rules to mean they can never lose.

I understand that they've won within the system, you're at the point there is still the tiniest chance of changing this if the American people rise up and respond with mass civil unrest. But that requires the seed of hope or belief that you can change anything. I'm not asking about the despair because I'm ignorant of how fucked your system is, I'm asking because I do. I've been acknowledging the problem as long as the likes of Sarah Kandzior have been shouting about the danger.

This is the last chance, if Americans don't have enough self belief to truly fight this then you'll sinking into some truly dark times and as the world super power the rest of the world will get dragged down too. The Democrats aren't saving us, the courts aren't saving us and the vaunted checks and balances sure aren't either. Fear of mass unrest and uprising is the only thing that might.

And I understand that the whole 2nd amendment being a protection against government oppression utterly fails when the vast majority of those exercising the right are more likely to form a citizens militia to be the vanguard of the oppression.

So I don't know what I'm looking for, I guess I just want to see people not going quietly into that [not] good night.

[Darzin]

They won't because these laws you are talking about, are supported by the majority of people in Alabama. Everyone here is talking about how much these laws hurt women, but it's ignoring that in the states these laws are passing they are supported by a majority of women. 

When you say rise up, who? Those who are against these laws don't for the most part live in Alabama. The people of Alabama have been chomping at the bit to pass these laws for decades. They'll get them and just like Kansas they'll regret it. They've been able to keep up support because it's a lot easier to be in favor of banning something when it's academic and you don;t suffer the consequences of actually enacting the ban, see the Republicans and the ACA. 

[lokisnow]

Democrats chose en masse not to vote in 2010 and this is the result, elections have consequences, especially that one. Rahm and Obama explicitly said they did not give a fuck about appointing judges in 2009, and this is the result. Dean said to campaign everywhere all the time and got a sixty seat senate in two years, Obama said “that’s fucking stupid! it’s not the most efficient use of resources” and all the wonks nodded sagely in mathematical agreement as Obama put a stop to it and this is the result.

Democrats are only getting handed to them the obvious consequences of their leaderships major decisions, it just took a while for the chickens to come home to roost, but functionally this is what they’ve wanted.

the best outcome for democrat leadership is perpetually open pockets of donors combined with no majorities in any chamber and no primary challengers. That is how you live the truly good life as a politician—it is what you are entitled to!

[karaddin]

When I say rise up I mean the entire country. Mass protests and general strikes. I know it's not easy and I know it doesn't come without a cost, but the alternative is letting a fascist state be built brick by brick and the women of colour that will be the first targeted by these laws don't have the luxury of tapping out in despair.

And I've seen data that is quite to the contrary that a majority of people even in the deep red states support banning abortion - even among some of those that do support it, these new laws are seen as going too far. See Pat Robertson saying that ffs.

 

[sologdin]

despair is unauthorized, comrades.  recall that the edifice of stalinism was overthrown via parliamentary procedure from within, even as the CIA wrote estimates of its infallibility and hardened cold warriors such as bobby conquest planned to fight off a red dawn invasion. 

[KingintheNorth4]

1 hour ago, karaddin said:

When I say rise up I mean the entire country. Mass protests and general strikes. I know it's not easy and I know it doesn't come without a cost, but the alternative is letting a fascist state be built brick by brick and the women of colour that will be the first targeted by these laws don't have the luxury of tapping out in despair.

And I've seen data that is quite to the contrary that a majority of people even in the deep red states support banning abortion - even among some of those that do support it, these new laws are seen as going too far. See Pat Robertson saying that ffs.

 

You know a law is draconian as fuck when even people like Pat Robertson and Tomi Lahren are criticizing it.

[sologdin]

hubris of overreach.  these statutes can be crushed out like cigarettes by the current court.  how much damage in the process, though, to the planned parenthood v. casey framework, which had already been a two-thirds overruling of roe v. wade?  we can envision a result that holds the statutes repugnant but nevertheless constricts the right to terminate.

perhaps there's some cause for concern about constriction in the recent tax board v. hyatt case, which overturned a rule of decision that had been in place for forty years. the dissent is concerned that casey will be proscribed next--though i am reading the majority opinion to adopt a countertextual rationale, finding an unstated soveteign immunity in the structure of the constitution.  this is the rightwing majority authorizing a penumbra rationale, which means that the hermeneutic foundation for griswold privacy is enhanced rather than eroded.

[Quijote Light]

People keep saying Robertson is criticizing the law, but as far as I can tell he’s only criticizing the fact that he thinks it’s too harsh a law to get Roe v Wade overturned. I’m fairly certain he’s not opposed to it in principle.