Politics, Everyday, All day... morning, noon and night....II

[Canoe]

Return of the firing squad: a quicker but less sanitized method of execution is gaining ground in the US
As more ‘technological’ methods have proved grisly, some states are considering shooting prisoners instead

[one cherry pick]
Lawyers for Nevada countered that some firing squad executions didn’t go as planned and were probably painful. They debated the data on the subject, which is scant and contested. Williams explained that in one Utah case it appeared “that the execution team deliberately did not aim for the target for reasons that are unclear to me, possibly to make the individual suffer more”.

[another]
Ultimately, Denno and others said, the death penalty remains popular, but not if it’s bloody. Judging by Utah’s experience, if a firing squad execution is carried out this year, it will tap into the public’s ambivalence and set off public debate about executions as a whole. Federal judge Alex Kozinski wrote in 2014, “If we, as a society, cannot stomach the splatter from an execution carried out by firing squad, then we shouldn’t be carrying out executions at all.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... ing-ground

[Canoe]

A sophisticated Chinese anti-aircraft system was delivered to Russian ally Serbia in a veiled operation this weekend, amid Western concerns that an arms buildup in the Balkans during the war in Ukraine could threaten the fragile peace in the region. twitter.com/AP/status/1513155493132443650

My piece on Finland’s rapid moves towards a NATO bid. Gov’t update on security policy due Apr 14th. Things could move fast after that. “I'm pretty confident we will be filing the membership agreement…in a few weeks’ time” as MP @elinavaltonen told me.
Sweden moving more slowly. But @carlbildt confident that just as Finland caught up with Sweden on EU in 1995, Sweden will do so now. “For me, it is inconceivable that we would end up in a situation where the two countries come to different conclusions.”
twitter.com/shashj/status/1512488459667382273

[cherry picked from article]

Ukraine War: Russia warns Sweden and Finland against Nato membership
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that "the alliance remains a tool geared towards confrontation".

It comes as US defence officials said Moscow's invasion of Ukraine has been a "massive strategic blunder" which will likely bring Nato enlargement. US officials expect the Nordic neighbours to bid for membership of the alliance, potentially as early as June. Washington is believed to support the move which would see the Western alliance grow to 32 members. US State Department officials said last week that discussions had taken place between Nato leaders and foreign ministers from Helsinki and Stockholm.

Before it launched its invasion, Russia demanded that the alliance agree to halt any future enlargement, but the war has led to the deployment of more Nato troops on its eastern flank and a rise in public support for Swedish and Finnish membership.

But Moscow has been clear that it opposes any potential enlargement of the alliance. Mr Peskov warned the bloc "is not that kind of alliance which ensures peace and stability, and its further expansion will not bring additional security to the European continent". Last week Mr Peskov said that Russia would have to "rebalance the situation" with its own measures were Sweden and Finland to join Nato. [Russia already rebalancing. I.e. "sophisticated Chinese anti-aircraft system was delivered to Russian ally Serbia"]

And in February Maria Zakharova, Russia's foreign ministry spokeswoman, warned of "military and political consequences" if the countries joined the bloc.

Despite the threats, both countries have pushed ahead with their bids and stepped up defence spending. On Monday, army leaders in Helsinki announced a new plan to allocate €14m (£10.88m) to purchase drones for Finland's military. And last month Swedish officials said they would boost defence spending by 3 billion kronas ($317m; £243m) in 2022.

www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61066503

[Canoe]

Nato’s ‘achilles heel’: alliance conducts war games in nervous Lithuania

Baltic nation is calling for increased military presence in response to Russian invasion of Ukraine

As Nato members prepare to meet in Madrid in June, Lithuania, along with its Baltic neighbour Estonia, is calling on Nato to urgently adjust its posture in the region from deterrence to what it calls “forward defence”.

“What we’re seeing in Russia and Belarus is now a dangerous country with the intention to attack other sovereign states,” Landsbergis told the Guardian. “It’s a double-edged sword: on the one hand Russia has proven in Ukraine that it is a declining regional power. On the other hand, it can still do a lot of damage on its way down, as it seems to have no regard for its own losses. We have to defend the Baltic states, especially those that are geographically interesting to Russia.”

www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/11/n ... -lithuania

[Canoe]

Cherrypicked

Biden announces measures to crack down on ‘ghost guns’
The White House said there had been a tenfold increase in reports of ‘unserialized, privately made firearms’ since 2016

Ghost guns are an increasing problem for US law enforcement. The critical component in building an untraceable gun is the lower receiver, a part typically made of metal or polymer. An unfinished receiver – sometimes referred to as an “80% receiver” – can be legally bought online with no serial numbers or other markings and no license required.

On Monday, the administration also released an executive action to regulate “split receiver” firearms with serial numbers and background checks and to require gun sellers to maintain sales records more than 20 years old.

According to ATF’s National Tracing Center, on average more than 1,300 firearms a year are untraceable because the federally licensed firearms dealer destroyed the relevant records that were more than 20 years old.

Ghost gun companies ... They don’t want to compete with the gun manufacturers that have to follow regulations.

The Department of Justice will also aim to “turn some ghost guns already in circulation into serialised firearms” by requiring the addition of serial numbers in any re-sale.

if an individual builds a firearm at home and then sells it to a pawn broker or another federally licensed dealer, that dealer must put a serial number on the weapon before selling it to a customer. This requirement will apply regardless of how the firearm was made, meaning it includes ghost guns made from individual parts, kits, or by 3D-printers.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/11 ... -crackdown

FACT SHEET: The Biden Administration Cracks Down on Ghost Guns, Ensures That ATF Has the Leadership it Needs to Enforce Our Gun Laws
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-roo ... -gun-laws/

[ygmir]

how does any of that affect gun violence?
Considering the vast majority of gun violence is committed by people who don't care about the law.
Also, people who traffic guns to criminals, care not, at all, for laws.

[Lonesomebri]

Speed limits, stop signs, laws against murder and rape, blah blah blah are stupid, criminals don't care and only good people get caught, or some such logic

[some seeing eye]

I would strongly suggest we refrain from any further discussion of guns on ePlaya by all or any posters and positions. They are not a BRC item. Discussion of them here is not needed.

[Canoe]

In a thread that isn't about BRC items...
I suppose we could stick to including things like the news/politics of Russia's war in/against Ukraine, and the related tanks, rockets, missiles, artillery, UAVs, terrorist units & war crimes, or should we stick to purely defensive things, like anti-aircraft systems.

[Simon of the Playa]

six months after Trump left office, an investment fund controlled by the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), invested $2 billion with Trump’s senior advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner, despite the fact that the fund advisors found Kushner’s new company “unsatisfactory in all aspects.” At the same time, they also invested about $1 billion in another new firm run by Trump’s former treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin.

Kushner has little experience in private equity, and his firm consists primarily of that Saudi money; no American institutions have invested with him. The Saudi investment will net Kushner’s firm about $25 million a year in asset management fees, and the investors required him to hire qualified investment professionals to manage the money.

It certainly looks as if Kushner is being rewarded for his work on behalf of the kingdom, and perhaps in anticipation of influence in the future. Kushner defended MBS after news broke that the crown prince had approved the killing and dismemberment of U.S. resident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Kushner helped to broker $110 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia, even as Congress was outraged by MBS’s war in Yemen. Most concerning, though, is that Kushner had access to the most sensitive materials in our government. Career officials denied Kushner’s security clearance out of concern about his foreign connections, but Trump overruled them.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.c ... il-11-2022

[Simon of the Playa]

"The story of Babel is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit. Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past."

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... el/629369/

[Simon of the Playa]

Democracies are at risk from authoritarianism today in large part because centralizing power in a few wealthy people permits those people to continue to pocket disproportionate shares of the national wealth.

A study released yesterday by ProPublica of leaked tax documents from the Internal Revenue Service revealed how our current laws permit the very wealthy to sidestep taxes and amass greater and greater wealth. According to Forbes, the wealth of the richest 25 Americans rose more than $400 billion from 2014 to 2018, giving them a combined wealth of $1.1 trillion. It would take the wealth of 14.3 million ordinary American wage earners to get to that number. During those years, those 25 richest Americans paid $13.6 billion in taxes, a true tax rate of 3.4%.

Those with virtually unlimited money can buy the tools to spread propaganda in favor of their position. That concern is behind the fight over “free speech” that right-wing leaders have launched against social media platforms that have excluded their lies and calls for violence.

It is also behind the outcry today over the proposal of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, allegedly the richest man in the world, to buy Twitter for a cash offer of $43 billion in a hostile takeover of the popular platform. (According to ProPublica, Musk paid no income tax in 2018.) Musk says he wants to own the platform himself to make it more “broadly inclusive,” because he believes that inclusion is “extremely important to the future of civilization…. I don’t care about the economics at all.”

Musk’s call for “free speech” is perceived to be a sign that he would reopen the platform to former president Donald Trump and others currently banned from it because of their lies about the January 6 insurrection. Right-wing politicians lauded the potential purchase, while journalists, who use the platform intensively to keep track of breaking stories, mulled whether they could stay if it becomes a haven for the right wing.

That right wing appears to be dominating the United States these days as the Republican Party has traded power for defense of democracy. Yesterday, CNN reported that a new book about the last days of the Trump presidency says that then–Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) indulged Trump’s attempt to overturn the election in order to get Trump’s help in the Georgia runoff election for the Senate so that the Republicans could stay in power there.

The Big Lie that Trump had really won the election has now become a litmus test for party members, as he is tightening his grip on the Republican Party. Today, in a clear indication that party leaders intend to hold the door open for a 2024 presidential run for Trump or someone like him, the Republican National Committee voted unanimously to withdraw from debates sponsored by the nonpartisan, nonprofit Commission on Presidential Debates. Trump repeatedly insisted the 2020 presidential debates, even the one hosted by Fox News Channel journalist Chris Wallace, were biased against him.

Trump hates debates not least because his knowledge of political topics is weak; in an interview on Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity’s show last night, Trump appeared not to understand the difference between NATO—a defensive alliance of 30 member states including the Baltic states and the U.S.—and the European Union, a political and economic union of 27 member states primarily located in Europe. In a discussion about NATO, he claimed to have asked then-German chancellor Angela Merkel: “How many Chevrolets are you selling this month in Munich or Berlin?”

He added: “she looked at me and [said,] ‘Well, probably none.’”

In the same interview, Trump refused to condemn Putin and appeared to blame NATO for the invasion.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.c ... il-14-2022

[Simon of the Playa]

CDBC8A5A-F308-4261-A51A-13B0A853107A.jpeg

[Simon of the Playa]

All 13 female state senators in the Nebraska legislature, including five Republicans, issued a statement Thursday condemning the “highly credible, corroborated allegations.”

“Sexual assault is despicable and damaging,” the statement added. “This is not a question of politics — it is an issue of character and basic human decency.” Herbster’s actions “make him unfit to serve,” the statement concluded.

Herbster, owner and CEO of Conklin Company and a sometimes beauty pageant judge, is currently a front-runner in the race for Nebraska governor, even though he has never held political office. He reportedly gave $1.3 million to Trump’s campaigns and attended the Jan. 6, 2021, rally outside the Capitol with members of Trump’s inner circle .

Donald Trump Jr. campaigned with Herbster in Nebraska earlier this week.

Trump has hailed Herbster, who considers himself a born-again Christian, as a “tremendous supporter of America First.”

https://news.yahoo.com/senator-shock-tr ... 22994.html

[Simon of the Playa]

Today, political scientist and member of the Russian legislative body Vyacheslav Nikonov said, “in reality, we embody the forces of good in the modern world because this clash is metaphysical…. We are on the side of good against the forces of absolute evil…. This is truly a holy war that we’re waging, and we have to win it and of course we will because our cause is just. We have no other choice. Our cause is not only just, our cause is righteous and victory will certainly be ours.”

Nikonov was defending the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in which Russian troops have leveled cities, killed thousands, kidnapped children, and raped and tortured Ukrainian citizens.

The intellectual leap from committing war crimes to claiming to be on the side of good might be explained by an interview published in the New Statesman at the beginning of April. Speaking with former Portuguese secretary of state for European affairs Bruno Maçães, Sergey Karaganov, a former advisor to Russian president Vladimir Putin, predicted the end of the western democracies that have shaped the world since World War II. Dictators, he suggested, will take over.

Democracy is failing and authoritarianism rising, Karaganov said, because of democracy’s bad moral foundations. As he put it: “Western civilisation has brought all of us great benefits, but now people like myself and others are questioning the moral foundation of Western civilisation.”

Karaganov’s statement says a lot about why white evangelicals in the U.S. are willing to toss democracy overboard in favor of a one-party state dominated by one powerful leader. They deny the premise of a system in which all people are equal before the law and have the right to have a say in their government.

Putin cemented his rise to power in 2013 with antigay laws that supporters claimed defended conservative values against an assault of “genderless and fruitless so-called tolerance,” which “equals good and evil.” Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, an ally of Putin’s, has been open about his determination to replace the multiculturalism at the heart of democracy with Christian culture, stop the immigration that he believes undermines Hungarian culture, and reject “adaptable family models” for “the Christian family model.”

The American right has embraced this attack on our system. In October 2021, former vice president Mike Pence spoke in Budapest at a forum denouncing immigration and urging traditional social values, where he told the audience he hoped that the U.S. Supreme Court would soon outlaw abortion thanks to the three justices Trump put on the court. Next month, the American Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) will be held in Budapest, Hungary; Orbán will be the keynote speaker.

Increasingly, Republican lawmakers have called not for the U.S. government to leave business alone, as was their position under President Ronald Reagan, but to use government power to crack down on “woke” businesses they insist are undermining the policies they value—meaning companies that protect LGBTQ rights, racial justice, reproductive choice, and access to the ballot. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis and his supporters have threatened Disney for its mild defense of LGBTQ rights, insisting the company grooms children for sexual abuse, and Texas Republicans are considering barring local governments from doing business with any national company that provides abortion coverage for its employees.

To achieve such control in a country where they are a minority, they are skewing the electoral system to install a one-party government. Just like Orbán’s government in Hungary, and Putin’s in Russia, the one-party government they envision will benefit a very small group of wealthy people: witness the Russian oligarchs whose yachts worth hundreds of millions of dollars are being impounded all over the world. And, just like those governments, it will be overseen by a strongman, who will continue to insist that his opponents are immoral.

But here’s the thing:

Democracy is a moral position. Defending the right of human beings to control their own lives is a moral position. Treating everyone equally before the law is a moral position. Insisting that everyone has a right to have a say in their government is a moral position.

This moral position is hardly some newfangled radicalism. It is profoundly conservative. It is the fundamental principle on which our country has been based for almost 250 years.

In 1776, the nation’s Founders wrote in the Declaration of Independence that all people “are created equal…[and] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness….” They asserted that governments are legitimate only if those they govern consent to them.

The Founders did not live these principles, of course; they preserved the racial, gender, and wealth inequality that enabled them to imagine a world in which white men of property were all equal.

But after World War II, Americans tried to bring these principles to life. It is this attempt for America to realize its ideals that the radicals on the right want to overturn.

After World War II, the Supreme Court began to insist that all Americans really do have a right to self-determination and that they must be treated equally before the law. Using the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee that no state can “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,” it began to upend longstanding racial, gender, class, and religious hierarchies.

It said, for example, that the promise of equality before the law meant that people of color had a right to a jury that was not made up exclusively of white people, that Black and Brown kids had a right to attend the same public schools as their white neighbors, and that white Americans could not kill or assault Black Americans without consequences.

It decided that states could not privilege one race or one religion over another and that people have the right to marry whom they wish, across racial and gender lines. It decided that people themselves, not the state, had a right to plan their families.

Then, to ensure that states were truly democratic, in 1965, Congress protected the right of all Americans to vote, giving them an equal say in their government and bringing to life the concept in the Declaration of Independence that governments are legitimate only when they derive their power from the consent of the governed.

Americans who had seen the horrors of the Holocaust—which was, after all, the logical and ultimate outcome of a society based on hierarchies—saw their defense of equality as a moral position. It recognizes the inherent worth of individuals without privileging one race, one gender, one religion, or the wealthy. It works to bring the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to life, stopping the violence that certain white Christian men in the past visited on those they could dominate with impunity.

Those radicals who are now taking away the right of self-determination, the right to equality before the law, and the right to vote because they are “questioning the moral foundation of Western civilisation” are launching a fundamental attack on our nation.


https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.c ... il-17-2022

[gaminwench]

Heather Cox Richardson is awesome.

Thank you.

[Simon of the Playa]

MSNBC commentator and national security expert Malcolm Nance has thrown his lot in with those fighting against Russia. Tonight, speaking in uniform from Ukraine, he told MSNBC’s Joy Reid: “The more I saw of the war going on, the more I thought I’m done talking… It’s time to take action here. So about a month ago I joined the international legion here in Ukraine….”


https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.c ... il-18-2022

[Simon of the Playa]

In response to a colleague who had called her a “groomer” in a fundraising email after McMorrow stood up against marginalizing the state’s LGBTQ population, McMorrow made a stand against the hatred and bigotry coming from Republican colleagues. Defining herself as “a straight, white, Christian, married suburban mom,” she called out the “performative nonsense” of her so-called Christian colleagues. “People who are different are not the reason that our roads are in bad shape… or that healthcare costs are too high, or that teachers are leaving the profession,” she said. “We cannot let hateful people tell you otherwise to scapegoat and deflect from the fact that they are not doing anything to fix the real issues that impact people’s lives.”

Recalling historical heroes who tried “to right wrongs and fix the injustice in the world,” she reminded her colleagues that “each and every single one of us bears responsibility for writing the next chapter of history. [We decide] what happens next, and how WE respond to history and the world around us.”

“We will not let hate win.”

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.c ... il-20-2022

[lucky420]

In response to a colleague who had called her a “groomer” in a fundraising email after McMorrow stood up against marginalizing the state’s LGBTQ population, McMorrow made a stand against the hatred and bigotry coming from Republican colleagues. Defining herself as “a straight, white, Christian, married suburban mom,” she called out the “performative nonsense” of her so-called Christian colleagues. “People who are different are not the reason that our roads are in bad shape… or that healthcare costs are too high, or that teachers are leaving the profession,” she said. “We cannot let hateful people tell you otherwise to scapegoat and deflect from the fact that they are not doing anything to fix the real issues that impact people’s lives.”

Recalling historical heroes who tried “to right wrongs and fix the injustice in the world,” she reminded her colleagues that “each and every single one of us bears responsibility for writing the next chapter of history. [We decide] what happens next, and how WE respond to history and the world around us.”

“We will not let hate win.”

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.c ... il-20-2022

Her response was absolutely spot on. We need more of this

[Simon of the Playa]

Today, McCarthy responded to Burns and Martin’s story with a statement saying that the reporting was “totally false and wrong” before going on a partisan rant that the “corporate media is obsessed with doing everything it can to further a liberal agenda” and insisting that the country was better off with former president Trump in office. McCarthy’s spokesperson, Mark Bednar, denied the specifics of the story: “McCarthy never said he’d call Trump to say he should resign,” Bednar said.

Oops. There was a tape.

On January 10, 2021, McCarthy and Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) on a call with the House Republican leadership spoke about invoking the 25th Amendment, and McCarthy said he expected impeachment to pass the House and likely the Senate, and that he planned to tell Trump he should resign.

After Rachel Maddow played the tape on her show tonight, conservative lawyer and Washington Post columnist George Conway tweeted: “Here’s an idea for you, Kevin. Tell the truth. Save whatever you might be able to salvage of your dignity and reputation. Come clean.”



https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.c ... il-21-2022

[Simon of the Playa]

In last night’s filed motion was part of the testimony to the committee from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former special assistant to the president and the chief of staff. When asked which members of Congress were involved in calls about overturning the election—including calls saying such efforts were illegal—Hutchinson named Representatives Greene, Jordan, Boebert, Scott Perry (R-PA), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Mo Brooks (R-AL), Jody Hice (R-GA), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), and Debbie Lesko (R-AZ).

The heart of this group was the “Freedom Caucus,” which was organized in 2015 to move the Republican Party farther to the right. Its first chair was Jim Jordan; its second was Mark Meadows. Its third was Andy Biggs. Mick Mulvaney, who would go on to Trump’s White House, and Ron DeSantis, who is now governor of Florida, were key organizers.

Let’s be clear: the people working to keep Trump in office by overturning the will of the people were trying to destroy our democracy. Not one of them, or any of those who plotted with them, called out the illegal attempt to destroy our government.

To what end did they seek to overthrow our democracy?

The current Republican Party has two wings: one eager to get rid of any regulation of business, and one that wants to get rid of the civil rights protections that the Supreme Court and Congress began to put into place in the 1950s. Business regulation is actually quite popular in the U.S., so to build a political following, in the 1980s, leaders of the anti-regulation wing of the Republican Party promised racists and the religious right that they would stomp out the civil rights legislation that since the 1950s has tried to make all Americans equal before the law.

But even this marriage has not been enough to win elections, since most Americans like business regulation and the protection of things like the right to use birth control. So, to put its vision into place, the Republican Party has now abandoned democracy. Its leaders have concluded that any Democratic victory is illegitimate, even if voters have clearly chosen a Democrat, as they did with Biden in 2020, by more than 7 million votes.

Former speechwriter for George W. Bush David Frum wrote in 2018: "If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.” And here we are.


https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.c ... il-23-2022

[Simon of the Playa]

"In a short period of time, investigations revealed that during the occupation of Bucha these very persons took unarmed civilians hostage, tortured them with hunger and thirst, kept them on their knees with their hands tied and their eyes taped, humiliated, and beat them,” Venediktova said.

The beatings were to get the civilians to provide information about the location of Ukrainian armed forces and territorial defense forces, she said, but many were tortured without reason.

Russian military servicemen threatened their victims with death and fired guns in their direction. There is also evidence proving that the 10 Russian soldiers robbed residents of their personal items, Venediktova said.

Ukrainian investigators said they are continuing to gather evidence and that these are just the first 10 to be named."


The retreat of Russian forces from the town last month revealed harrowing evidence of brutal killings, torture, mass graves, and the indiscriminate targeting of civilians in the fighting, prompting calls from several countries, as well as the United Nations and the International Criminal Court (ICC), for investigations to determine whether war crimes were committed.

https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-torture ... 25840.html

[Simon of the Playa]

time to shut it off

[Simon of the Playa]

And so here we are. A minority, placed in control of the U.S. Supreme Court by a president who received a minority of the popular vote and then, when he lost reelection, tried to overturn our democracy, is explicitly taking away a constitutional right that has been protected for fifty years. Its attack on federal protection of civil rights applies not just to abortion, but to all the protections put in place since World War II: the right to use birth control, marry whomever you wish, live in desegregated spaces, and so on.

The draft opinion says the state legislatures are the true heart of our democracy and that they alone should determine abortion laws in the states. But Republican-dominated legislatures have also curtailed the right to vote. When Democrats in Congress tried to protect voting rights, Senate Republicans killed it with the filibuster.

Tonight's news is an alarm like the 1857 Dred Scott decision, which gave a few white men who controlled state legislatures power over the American majority.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-2-2022

[Elorrum]

Cui bono: (who benefits) is always a good question. I see a lot of polarizing Ideology as just a lever for the wealthy to get votes, and keep power. Restricting reproductive rights, militarizing the police, pricing higher education out of range, undermining public education, and legislating discrimination is about keeping a subclass of workers in perpetuity. Is it coincidental that the largest group of workers is aging out of the labor market, nearly a million Americans died of covid in the last two years, and it’s important right NOW that abortions need to stop?

[Simon of the Playa]

76B89678-C151-4469-9DB3-FBCC4B2AE6DF.jpeg

[FIGJAM]

Strangely enough, Ronald Reagan enacted the first legal abortions while governor of California, only to switch to pro-life as president.

[Simon of the Playa]

“Traditional Republican business groups can provide the resources,” political operative Grover Norquist explained, “but these groups can provide the votes.” To keep that base riled up, the Republican Party swung behind efforts to take away women’s constitutional right to abortion, which the Supreme Court had recognized by a vote of 7–2 in its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and then reaffirmed in 1992 in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Although even as recently as last week, only about 28% of Americans wanted Roe v. Wade overturned, Republicans continued to promise their base that they would see that decision destroyed. Indeed, the recognition that evangelical voters would turn out to win a Supreme Court seat might have been one of the reasons then–Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell refused to hold hearings for then-president Barack Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland. Leaving that seat empty was a tangible prize to turn those voters out behind Donald Trump, whose personal history of divorces and sexual assault was not necessarily attractive to evangelicals, in 2016.

But, politically, the Republicans could not actually do what they promised: not only is Roe v. Wade popular, but also it recognizes a constitutional right that Americans have assumed for almost 50 years. The Supreme Court has never taken away a constitutional right, and politicians rightly feared what would happen if they attacked that fundamental right.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-3-2022

[The Rod]

I mean. That the people who always do evil things are doing an evil thing and the people who always say they are the ones to stop them are doing nothing to stop them. Are we shocked?

[Elorrum]

The brutality of greed is real to the ones dying from it. Up to that point it is, “Well, I’m ok, glad it’s not me.” Government and law are tools of greed, and are owned by greed. They are not regulators or protectors of safety or rights. That is a dream. White wealthy women and men will get all the maternal healthcare and abortions they want. I’m past reproductive age, but my concern now is to be able to live indoors until I die. I think it’s a fight against the same thing, so I’m available for all attempts against it. It’s all on fire, yes.

[Simon of the Playa]

Interestingly, after the initial insistence—without evidence—by the right wing that the leak came from the left, there is reason to think that, in fact, the decision was leaked by a right-wing zealot afraid that Roberts, who did not want to overturn Roe v. Wade entirely, would pull at least one of the other right-wing justices away from the extremist stance of Justice Samuel Alito’s decision and weaken it.

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo noted that on April 26, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by the editorial board suggesting this very scenario. The editorial board warned that Roberts seemed inclined to “find a middle way” in the Dobbs decision and that if he “pulls another justice to his side, he could write the plurality decision that controls in a 6–3 decision.” The editorial continued: “We hope he doesn’t succeed—for the good of the Court and the country…it would prolong the Court’s abortion agony…. Far better for the Court to leave the thicket of abortion regulation and return the issue to the states.”

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-5-2022