Some of us have been yelling our heads off for decades that there was somebody on the front porch with an ax just waiting to knock the door down at the first opportunity. It's great that people are finally getting the message, and it might end up saving our democracy.
Yes Chris, but it's very unfortunate that people needed the axe to go smashing through the door before they believed you. A hell of a lot of trouble could have been avoided.
Most people were just not paying that much attention to this issue. Most people are just trying to live their lives day-to-day. So it may have taken a metaphorical axe to the front door to wake them up.
But they have been awakened now. And boy are they pissed. 😉
That's true Color Me Skeptical and I wish they'd been paying attention earlier. While I too take pleasure in the damage it is doing the Republicans I still wish they'd been 'headed off at the pass'.
If I'm honest, I'm angrier at the Democrats for using ROE V. WADE to fundraise off of, and to "encourage" feminists to vote for Democrats, rather than using those times they had majorities in both houses of Congress and the White House to codify Women's Body Autonomy into law by legalizing abortion, birth control, and putting paid to "religious freedom" objections to both. You are a doctor, there is your patient—do your damned job already, and keep your religion to yourself! If you won't do it, find them a doctor who WILL....
The Democratic Party has always felt more than a little guilty about being "The Party of Abortion", and has been far too happy to leave the decision in the Courts' hands. I remember during the height of Clinton NeoLiberalism, when Hillary Rodham Clinton openly said during one of her Presidential runs that "We need to have a dialogue with the Republicans about abortion", when the only "dialogue" required was "Sit Down and STFU—if you don't want an abortion, don't get one! Leave everyone else's choice alone."
I also remember Democratic strategists of the period, when the Republicans were winning elections regularly, faffing about how what the DNC needed was "a Black pro-life church lady" to attract more conservative voters—rather than a Democratic Party that stood up to the Right and fought them with their own weapons like they deserved to be fought. The Right kept winning elections from 1980 until recently because they HAD definite positions and they stuck BY them even when they lost, unlike Democrats who would flip on a position the moment it looked unpopular. Worse, the Democratic Party kept tracking more and more Right, to keep up with what they thought "the mood of the country" was, until Bernie Sanders and The Squad are considered "Far Left Outliers" rather than Slightly Left of Center, which is where they are compared to every other Western Democracy.
The Republicans have been setting the terms of the debate for the last 30 years because most of the Boomers and many GenXers believed the GOP rhetoric about neoliberal economics.
What the Boomers and GenXers didn’t understand was how much they were living off the residual benefits of the investments made in the New Deal and the Great Society.
Now that we have had nearly four decades of attenuated investment in the Public Good (infrastructure, healthcare, education) the younger generations are starting to see that neoliberalism is not all that great and that maybe we do need a more vigorous public sector.
And the Republicans and their donors are fighting it tooth and nail.
...which is why we need to fight back tooth and nail.
Not every rich person is an amoral sociopath, comforting as it is to think so—more to the point, not every rich person is willfully blind to what's going on around them. We're starting to hear talk about how the tax code and wages need to be more equitable from the 1%—not a LOT, mind, but some of the world's richest people are starting to say that a higher tax rate for them, along with higher wages and government-sponsored benefits for their workers, combined with real action on not turning the planet we're living on now into a hellscape, would not be the destruction of society that the Right alleges it to be.
I think it's less altruism than fear of starving mutant mobs with nothing to lose, if not for themselves than for their children and grandchildren—but I'll take fear if it helps the rest of us. 🤷♂️
I know that. And not every working class person is pro-union and pro-proletariat.
People are complex and often be contradictory.
Fundamentally we need to understand that we really are all in this together. There is no “escape” where the rich people can flee to. And frankly, they shouldn’t want to. We are all human beings and need to behave as such.
Tell that Elon Musk, who honestly thinks he can colonize Mars for the Superrich like him!
Frankly, I'd be amazed if he gets a low Earth orbit space station up that he and a handful of his deluded disciples can cram themselves into—which, given how life on space stations looks like? Is NO Paradise!
“Can the Jim Jordans and the Mike Johnsons shut the fuck up long enough to let the women in their party confuse people? I don’t know if that is actually something they can do,” she said. That result would assume that the Jordans and Johnsons actually view women as equals and allow them to lead. That's not going to happen and Nikki Haley isn't going to be VP because the Republican Party is full of misogynists. Republicans will not allow tax relief for parents because they're too busy making sure the 1% have more tax cuts. I live in red MO and pro-choice advocates are working hard on ballot initiatives on abortion rights for 2024. Our AG just lost in court after he tried to sabotage the ballot language. Medicaid expansion, medical and recreational marijuana passed through ballot initiatives and the Republican dominated legislature, demonstrating their inability to govern, failed in raising the threshold for passing such initiatives.
I was aware the moment that it was before the court, looking at who was on the court, that Roe v Wade was going to be overturned. As it is, my daughter, who is 18, is now studying in an EU country, where I am currently also living. This country does not have the great abortion laws that we left behind in Illinois, where it doesn't get any better, but it does have a lot of supports for families, and abortions can be had, just with more counseling. That is because this country has laws against genocide, and apparently being so untrusting of who might run it in the future, they thought they were protecting against mass killings through abortion. I don't quite see how the two things can be connected, but let us just say, things are moving forward now. Birth control should also be easier to access, as easy as aspirin, which one has to get from a pharmacist even though a prescription is not required, but here it is given with a prescription and under the age of 14 you need a parent's approval. I do have things to work against. However, one is provided a good free education through university in this country. Parents get 250 € child support money each month per child. Women and men get paid leave off after having a child. They get up to 3 years, and have to have started it before the child is 3 years old, and it ends by the time the child is 8. Mom's get 6 weeks off as maternity leave, so usually they start their paid parental leave after that. The father is only paid for 10-days though, this is an EU-wide standard. The 3 year time can be divided among parents, or one can take it. Your employer does not pay for the leave, you have to apply for parental leave money from the state, and how much you get depends on how much you earned. There are other supports, in addition to health insurance, Germans typically have a lot of other insurances, which provide protection from the loss of employment, or liability, so if one is well insured, one can manage to be more available for children. Child care for children ages 3-6 is covered with KITAs, they are supposed to be free at the age of 3, but my friend has children under and over in them, and they are all paying 70 € a month, which is the cost of what she feels is excellent quality food. So, children are subsidized from birth through university in care and education. A model that could be adopted in the USA. I know that there are even better models out there. The USA can make up its own, but it should meet the minimum standards of subsidized child care prior to school, and really college should be better subsidized too if people are encouraged to have children. Also, Democrats need to be having people made aware of role that immigrants are playing. Currently I live in a city where 50% of the people are over 60. This city is not making the same moves that the German federal government currently is to change immigration policy. It is not going to go along with it is the plan. However, in the USA, the Democrats have allowed the Republicans to lie about immigrants. We have an aging population too, and it should be said that having people who make the population average lower is helping to sustain things like our precious Social Security. The city I reside in, in the USA has 17.7% of its population 60 and over. More than half of these people fall into the fallacious category called "White." So, for those who are worried about immigrants replacing White people, they should be worrying about no one replacing anyone, and there not being enough younger people to do the things that need to be done. Almost 50% of households have a senior living in them, so lack of services can mean that there is great stress placed on others in the household if there are not other supports. I don't want to go into a whole elderly policy, but portraying immigrants as just people who are mooching off of native borns, and causing crime and necessitating higher taxes is so wrong, and Democrats have a year to change that impression. Caving to them is not doing it. Many Democratic politicians are not as savvy as they should be. These messages should be out there. I think we should have a day without immigrants, and every immigrant stay home paid. Let people see what things would be like. Many of my doctors would be unavailable, except for 2, and my daughter's primary care. That is true of the restaurants I go to. Many people there come from other countries. My husband, a scientist would not work, and neither would most of his colleagues in their department at their university and the national Lab they work at too. The cancer doctor a friend is seeing would not be there. Many of my daughter's friends parents would not be working. Many people who rely on immigrants for child and household, and elder care would not be working because they would need to take over these responsibilities. My immigrant mom who lives in a senior residence and her immigrant friends would not be putting their retirement money into the economy, etc... So, I see the messaging to be family friendly policies which of course include birth control, abortion, and child care support, as well as recognition of the important role that immigrants play. I think we need to make people much more aware of what would be missing if immigrants were gone. In my city immigrants comprise 20 percent of the labor force. Loss of 20 percent of the labor force would be missed, and would not just be replaced by native borns who want a job.
It's a classic example of the trouble Republicans have got themselves into by being captured by their extremist base. (Oh dear. How sad. Never mind). In Australia we have militant anti-abortionist and they hang out in the conservative party's meetings and put up all sorts of electorally dangerous stuff. But the Australian politicians let them have their say, act respectful and ignore them. A pro-choice Republican would never pass through the Republican primary machine and would have the unenviable task of fighting the extremists head on. Now the Republican politicians can duck and weave and evade the subject but no one will believe them. Large numbers of young voters (not just women) will never forgive them and if even small numbers of Republican women vote Democrat or even don't vote the disaster will be complete.
On my reading the question is whether abortion rights are going to be a signficant handicap or an election(s) losing disaster for Republicans. Time will tell, but if it's going to be the latter the results we've seen up to now is exactly what I would have expected to see.
I wish republicans applied the same logic to abortion that they use on guns. We can’t have gun control because criminals will get guns anyway. We can’t have abortion bans because people will get abortion anyway.
I despise the "pro-life" adoption argument. They're telling a woman that she can *just* be pregnant for 9 months, go thru labor & delivery & possibly a C-section, and maybe some day down the road someone will adopt that baby! Easy-peasy!
As of 2021, which seems to be the last year for which data is available, 113,589 children are waiting to be adopted. I'd never vote for Haley anyway, but if I were so inclined, I wouldn't because this stance of hers is terrible for women and, possibly, their children.
After living among men for 75 years, I've de ided they are only like drones in a beehive, with a few exceptions whose mother's brought them up right. I'll be glad when our Congress reflects that reality.
Some of us have been yelling our heads off for decades that there was somebody on the front porch with an ax just waiting to knock the door down at the first opportunity. It's great that people are finally getting the message, and it might end up saving our democracy.
Yes Chris, but it's very unfortunate that people needed the axe to go smashing through the door before they believed you. A hell of a lot of trouble could have been avoided.
Most people were just not paying that much attention to this issue. Most people are just trying to live their lives day-to-day. So it may have taken a metaphorical axe to the front door to wake them up.
But they have been awakened now. And boy are they pissed. 😉
That's true Color Me Skeptical and I wish they'd been paying attention earlier. While I too take pleasure in the damage it is doing the Republicans I still wish they'd been 'headed off at the pass'.
Fair point Michael.
If I'm honest, I'm angrier at the Democrats for using ROE V. WADE to fundraise off of, and to "encourage" feminists to vote for Democrats, rather than using those times they had majorities in both houses of Congress and the White House to codify Women's Body Autonomy into law by legalizing abortion, birth control, and putting paid to "religious freedom" objections to both. You are a doctor, there is your patient—do your damned job already, and keep your religion to yourself! If you won't do it, find them a doctor who WILL....
The Democratic Party has always felt more than a little guilty about being "The Party of Abortion", and has been far too happy to leave the decision in the Courts' hands. I remember during the height of Clinton NeoLiberalism, when Hillary Rodham Clinton openly said during one of her Presidential runs that "We need to have a dialogue with the Republicans about abortion", when the only "dialogue" required was "Sit Down and STFU—if you don't want an abortion, don't get one! Leave everyone else's choice alone."
I also remember Democratic strategists of the period, when the Republicans were winning elections regularly, faffing about how what the DNC needed was "a Black pro-life church lady" to attract more conservative voters—rather than a Democratic Party that stood up to the Right and fought them with their own weapons like they deserved to be fought. The Right kept winning elections from 1980 until recently because they HAD definite positions and they stuck BY them even when they lost, unlike Democrats who would flip on a position the moment it looked unpopular. Worse, the Democratic Party kept tracking more and more Right, to keep up with what they thought "the mood of the country" was, until Bernie Sanders and The Squad are considered "Far Left Outliers" rather than Slightly Left of Center, which is where they are compared to every other Western Democracy.
The Republicans have been setting the terms of the debate for the last 30 years because most of the Boomers and many GenXers believed the GOP rhetoric about neoliberal economics.
What the Boomers and GenXers didn’t understand was how much they were living off the residual benefits of the investments made in the New Deal and the Great Society.
Now that we have had nearly four decades of attenuated investment in the Public Good (infrastructure, healthcare, education) the younger generations are starting to see that neoliberalism is not all that great and that maybe we do need a more vigorous public sector.
And the Republicans and their donors are fighting it tooth and nail.
...which is why we need to fight back tooth and nail.
Not every rich person is an amoral sociopath, comforting as it is to think so—more to the point, not every rich person is willfully blind to what's going on around them. We're starting to hear talk about how the tax code and wages need to be more equitable from the 1%—not a LOT, mind, but some of the world's richest people are starting to say that a higher tax rate for them, along with higher wages and government-sponsored benefits for their workers, combined with real action on not turning the planet we're living on now into a hellscape, would not be the destruction of society that the Right alleges it to be.
I think it's less altruism than fear of starving mutant mobs with nothing to lose, if not for themselves than for their children and grandchildren—but I'll take fear if it helps the rest of us. 🤷♂️
I hope he does colonize Mars. And then he can take himself and his fanboys with him.
I know that. And not every working class person is pro-union and pro-proletariat.
People are complex and often be contradictory.
Fundamentally we need to understand that we really are all in this together. There is no “escape” where the rich people can flee to. And frankly, they shouldn’t want to. We are all human beings and need to behave as such.
Tell that Elon Musk, who honestly thinks he can colonize Mars for the Superrich like him!
Frankly, I'd be amazed if he gets a low Earth orbit space station up that he and a handful of his deluded disciples can cram themselves into—which, given how life on space stations looks like? Is NO Paradise!
“Can the Jim Jordans and the Mike Johnsons shut the fuck up long enough to let the women in their party confuse people? I don’t know if that is actually something they can do,” she said. That result would assume that the Jordans and Johnsons actually view women as equals and allow them to lead. That's not going to happen and Nikki Haley isn't going to be VP because the Republican Party is full of misogynists. Republicans will not allow tax relief for parents because they're too busy making sure the 1% have more tax cuts. I live in red MO and pro-choice advocates are working hard on ballot initiatives on abortion rights for 2024. Our AG just lost in court after he tried to sabotage the ballot language. Medicaid expansion, medical and recreational marijuana passed through ballot initiatives and the Republican dominated legislature, demonstrating their inability to govern, failed in raising the threshold for passing such initiatives.
I was aware the moment that it was before the court, looking at who was on the court, that Roe v Wade was going to be overturned. As it is, my daughter, who is 18, is now studying in an EU country, where I am currently also living. This country does not have the great abortion laws that we left behind in Illinois, where it doesn't get any better, but it does have a lot of supports for families, and abortions can be had, just with more counseling. That is because this country has laws against genocide, and apparently being so untrusting of who might run it in the future, they thought they were protecting against mass killings through abortion. I don't quite see how the two things can be connected, but let us just say, things are moving forward now. Birth control should also be easier to access, as easy as aspirin, which one has to get from a pharmacist even though a prescription is not required, but here it is given with a prescription and under the age of 14 you need a parent's approval. I do have things to work against. However, one is provided a good free education through university in this country. Parents get 250 € child support money each month per child. Women and men get paid leave off after having a child. They get up to 3 years, and have to have started it before the child is 3 years old, and it ends by the time the child is 8. Mom's get 6 weeks off as maternity leave, so usually they start their paid parental leave after that. The father is only paid for 10-days though, this is an EU-wide standard. The 3 year time can be divided among parents, or one can take it. Your employer does not pay for the leave, you have to apply for parental leave money from the state, and how much you get depends on how much you earned. There are other supports, in addition to health insurance, Germans typically have a lot of other insurances, which provide protection from the loss of employment, or liability, so if one is well insured, one can manage to be more available for children. Child care for children ages 3-6 is covered with KITAs, they are supposed to be free at the age of 3, but my friend has children under and over in them, and they are all paying 70 € a month, which is the cost of what she feels is excellent quality food. So, children are subsidized from birth through university in care and education. A model that could be adopted in the USA. I know that there are even better models out there. The USA can make up its own, but it should meet the minimum standards of subsidized child care prior to school, and really college should be better subsidized too if people are encouraged to have children. Also, Democrats need to be having people made aware of role that immigrants are playing. Currently I live in a city where 50% of the people are over 60. This city is not making the same moves that the German federal government currently is to change immigration policy. It is not going to go along with it is the plan. However, in the USA, the Democrats have allowed the Republicans to lie about immigrants. We have an aging population too, and it should be said that having people who make the population average lower is helping to sustain things like our precious Social Security. The city I reside in, in the USA has 17.7% of its population 60 and over. More than half of these people fall into the fallacious category called "White." So, for those who are worried about immigrants replacing White people, they should be worrying about no one replacing anyone, and there not being enough younger people to do the things that need to be done. Almost 50% of households have a senior living in them, so lack of services can mean that there is great stress placed on others in the household if there are not other supports. I don't want to go into a whole elderly policy, but portraying immigrants as just people who are mooching off of native borns, and causing crime and necessitating higher taxes is so wrong, and Democrats have a year to change that impression. Caving to them is not doing it. Many Democratic politicians are not as savvy as they should be. These messages should be out there. I think we should have a day without immigrants, and every immigrant stay home paid. Let people see what things would be like. Many of my doctors would be unavailable, except for 2, and my daughter's primary care. That is true of the restaurants I go to. Many people there come from other countries. My husband, a scientist would not work, and neither would most of his colleagues in their department at their university and the national Lab they work at too. The cancer doctor a friend is seeing would not be there. Many of my daughter's friends parents would not be working. Many people who rely on immigrants for child and household, and elder care would not be working because they would need to take over these responsibilities. My immigrant mom who lives in a senior residence and her immigrant friends would not be putting their retirement money into the economy, etc... So, I see the messaging to be family friendly policies which of course include birth control, abortion, and child care support, as well as recognition of the important role that immigrants play. I think we need to make people much more aware of what would be missing if immigrants were gone. In my city immigrants comprise 20 percent of the labor force. Loss of 20 percent of the labor force would be missed, and would not just be replaced by native borns who want a job.
It's a classic example of the trouble Republicans have got themselves into by being captured by their extremist base. (Oh dear. How sad. Never mind). In Australia we have militant anti-abortionist and they hang out in the conservative party's meetings and put up all sorts of electorally dangerous stuff. But the Australian politicians let them have their say, act respectful and ignore them. A pro-choice Republican would never pass through the Republican primary machine and would have the unenviable task of fighting the extremists head on. Now the Republican politicians can duck and weave and evade the subject but no one will believe them. Large numbers of young voters (not just women) will never forgive them and if even small numbers of Republican women vote Democrat or even don't vote the disaster will be complete.
On my reading the question is whether abortion rights are going to be a signficant handicap or an election(s) losing disaster for Republicans. Time will tell, but if it's going to be the latter the results we've seen up to now is exactly what I would have expected to see.
I wish republicans applied the same logic to abortion that they use on guns. We can’t have gun control because criminals will get guns anyway. We can’t have abortion bans because people will get abortion anyway.
I despise the "pro-life" adoption argument. They're telling a woman that she can *just* be pregnant for 9 months, go thru labor & delivery & possibly a C-section, and maybe some day down the road someone will adopt that baby! Easy-peasy!
As of 2021, which seems to be the last year for which data is available, 113,589 children are waiting to be adopted. I'd never vote for Haley anyway, but if I were so inclined, I wouldn't because this stance of hers is terrible for women and, possibly, their children.
After living among men for 75 years, I've de ided they are only like drones in a beehive, with a few exceptions whose mother's brought them up right. I'll be glad when our Congress reflects that reality.