As everyone knows, Texas passed a law banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, well before women know they are pregnant. There are no exceptions, not even for cases of rape and incest. Governor Gregg Abbott says the exemptions are unneeded because he will “eliminate” rape in Texas. Since he has already passed legislation to remove gun control, women can defend themselves, presumably, by shooting rapists dead. The Governor didn’t explain what to do if a woman is the victim of incest.
Many people think that the current Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade, abolishing women’s right to an abortion.
But this entire discussion may soon be moot, if it’s not already. Currently women can order pills online that are inexpensive and easy to obtain. States like Texas will try to ban these pills but they can’t control the mail.
In the United States, where the abortifacients misoprostol and mifepristone have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, abortions by pill made up more than a third of all abortions in 2017.
“It’s really a revolution that’s happened in the last 20 years for women,” said Rebecca Gomperts, a doctor in Austria who founded the online medical abortion service Women on Web in 2005.
Providers and analysts say interest in these pills has spiked in the United States since Texas passed a law banning most abortions in the nation’s second-most-populous state.
No matter what the Supreme Court does, no matter what red-state legislatures do, access to abortion will be easy.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Knowing Abbutt, he’ll eliminate rape by legalizing it.
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AbBUTT .. GOOD ONE, Jon.
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One can always hope that Texas will become moot, but I fear it is not going to happen any time soon.
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But Texas is already “mooed”, so maybe that’s a start.
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So moot is the modern past tense of moo?
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Yes.
Usage:
The cow was in no moot for the strawman, whose argument was rendered moot when the cow moot.”
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For far too long, Texas has been steered in the wrong direction by folks like Bush, Perry and Abbott to the point that they now sit on the horns of a dilemma: join the 21st century or continue down the path to becoming a laughing stock.
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“If I have seen further than others, it was by standing on the shoulders of giants” — Sir Isaac Newton
“If I have seen further than udders, it was by standing on the horns of steers” — Texas governor Greg Abbott
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Abbott has the vision and oratory skills of his predecessor GWB. Is he running for presidency in 2024?
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The wall is indeed his pet project. He may end up surrounding himslef with walls exactly as you suggested.
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Mmooorations
Abbott’s orations
Are barnyard sensations
That end with a plop
Like cowpies that drop
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Bush Whacking
Bush’s oration
For foreign invasion
Was “Mission done well”
A journey through Hell
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“A journey through Hell”
Led by the hero, Powell
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SomeDAM Poet,
“steered” “horns” “stock” “udders” “moooot”
brilliant.
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Well done, SomeDAM!
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The U.S. could give Texas back to Mexico or to the Los Zetas Cartel that allegedly already controls many elected officials in Texas and maybe even Abbott.
“Mexico drug cartel’s grip on politicians and police revealed in Texas court files”
“Los Zetas pumped money into elections in the border state of Coahuila but the detailed testimonies have been met with official denial and public apathy”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/10/mexico-drug-cartels-grip-on-politicians-and-police-revealed-in-texas-court-files
“All told, Texas has more than 300,000 victims of human trafficking, including nearly 234,000 adult victims of labor trafficking.”
https://www.kxxv.com/hometown/texas/reported-cases-of-human-trafficking-on-the-rise-during-a-pandemic
“The South Texas border area and San Antonio are the primary drug markets in the South Texas HIDTA region. The South Texas border area is a principal drug smuggling corridor between the United States and Mexico. San Antonio serves as a transshipment center for cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and methamphetamine smuggled into the United States from Mexico; the city is also a significant consumer market for these drugs.”
https://www.justice.gov/archive/ndic/pubs27/27513/border.htm
“Houston: City has “more brothels than Starbucks’
“The demand is so pervasive that at any given moment there are over 400 storefront sex businesses operating in Houston, said Sanborn.”
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Houston-City-has-more-brothels-than-Starbucks-12514737.php
“Central Texas’ location on the I-35 corridor also gives perpetrators easy access to both Dallas and Houston, which are rated two of the top estimated trafficking cities.”
https://www.kxxv.com/hometown/texas/reported-cases-of-human-trafficking-on-the-rise-during-a-pandemic
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Texas Ain’t Moot
Texas is mooed
Although they ain’t moot
The home of the dude
Who’s hard to compute
The Lone Star is crazy
As crazy as loon
It might be a daisey
But also buffoon
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O no! Surely there must be a way to regain rich, white, male control over women’s bodies!
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Sorry. That was a poor attempt at satire.
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It’s OK, Bob, we are not rich.
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You’re wrong there, Mate. I taught high-school for a few years at the end of my career, so I am LOADED.
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Oops, you are then guilty of satire as selfcharged.
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“The Governor didn’t explain what to do if a woman is the victim of incest. ”
Good old Texans don’t do incest, only immigrants, but the Governor will finish building the wall, which will take care of this problem once and for all.
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Now, if we could just convince the Federal government to put up a wall in the east, west and north to keep people like Abbott in.
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Well, I wouldn’t be so sure. They have the precedent in their tribal mythology of Lot and his daughters.
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Lots?
How many?
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It’s a moving story about loyalty to God. I like this somewhat light and somewhat critical retelling as if suggesting not to take any of this Bible stuff too seriously.
https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/places/related-articles/lot-and-his-daughters
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And with regard to finishing the wall, surely Gov. Abutt can outsource this to a private firm run by Steve Bannon.
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The person retelling the stories in the link you provided, Mate, is clearly a Christian apologist who tries to soft pedal the savagery of these tales about Lot by saying that he was a bad decision maker who made mistakes, an anachronistic judgment nowhere to be found in the original tales. The actual stories in Genesis 19 make no such claim about Lot. He is the one chosen by God to survive because he is “A RIGHTEOUS SOUL” and “WITHOUT INIQUITY” of the kinds found among the folks of Sodom and Gomorrah. Clearly, among those who concocted this myth/folktale about the origins of two tribes known as the Ammonites and the Moabites (part of the greater myth about the covenant with Abraham), offering your daughters to be raped by a mob in order to appease them is consistent with righteousness and non-iniquity, and being drunk is a perfectly acceptable reason for abominable sexual behavior. The parsimonious explanation is, ofc, that people in a savage time who thought in these savage ways wrote a savage myth that accepts unquestioningly behaviors that we today find appalling. But that would require giving up treating the text as exempt from the sort of analysis we would give to any other text from the distant past and imagining that rather than the text having been created by men with the sick and stupid worldviews common to their time and place, it is infallible history, inspired by and representing the views of the creator of the universe. But none of this is news to you, I bet, Mate.
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Thanks for posting the story of Lot as an example. In the future, Trump can be added to the myths written by the religious and he can serve as example of a ruler chosen by God to lead the U.S.
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Trump: the Parable of the Pathological Son
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That would be Sun, as in Glorious Leader Who Shines More Orange Than Does the Sun!
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And what did you do with your inheritance, Sun? Well, I tried to buy Greenland from Denmark. I built a few miles of stupid wall. I suggested that people inject disinfectant. I strutted about and called myself a Stable Genius who could pass a dementia test, barely. I attempted to turn the military on civilian protestors. And I made TONS of money having troops and foreign officials stay at my hotels. I separated babies from their parents. I sowed division and hate. I bullied and intimidated. I asked foreign allies for quid pro quos benefiting my reelection. I fomented an actual rebellion against the government I was supposedly leading. I trashed air and wetlands and national parks and monuments. And speaking of monuments, I made keeping monuments to genocidal, racist maniacs an issue among legions of citizen militia brownshirts. And I called the current existential crisis of Climate Change “just weather” and showed how to update forecast maps and so alter reality with a Sharpie.
Brilliant, my child! The Empire is yours!
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One caveat of the pill is that it can be taken until the 11th week.
https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/abortion/the-abortion-pill
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It’s not exactly recommended to take the pill without medical supervision.
https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/abortion/the-abortion-pill/how-do-i-get-the-abortion-pill
In any case, there are many other reason to reformulate the Supreme Court before 2024. Especially now that the TRUTH media platform is brewing in the heads of fans of Jan 6. Investors are already syanding by.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-s-truth-social-platform-could-make-millions-or-go-ncna1282853
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The medical supervision caveat may render the moot claim moot, since Texas’ makes abortion aiders and abbotters criminals.
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As a TX doc explained on NPR.
This law threatens my livelihood. It threatens my ability to care for my family. It threatens my career simply for doing what I was trained to do right here in Texas.
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/31/1050980382/ob-gyn-struggles-to-navigate-care-under-texas-abortion-law
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Investors and Proud Boys are standing by.
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Important info, Mate! But since I am not on the Trump social media platform, I won’t be able to retruth it. I’ll have to refake it on the vast network of Socialist fake news.
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The only livelihoods and careers the Supreme Court majority care about are their own.
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The Supreme Court justices, as you well know, are appointed for life. They don’t have to worry about losing their jobs.
They were chosen for their ideological leanings, and they know it.
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If you don’t want a Nazi in your house, don’t let one
You don’t know a fundamentalist til you met one
If you memorize your civil rights don’t forget one
If you don’t want an abortion, don’t get one…
Do you think women want to kill their own babies?
Well, if you got your own twisted baggage, then maybe
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Should you like that, you’ll love this:
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I sure appreciate to hear anger from the other side, especially this articulate.
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“But this entire discussion may soon be moot, if it’s not already. Currently women can order pills online that are inexpensive and easy to obtain.”
I’ve been hoping this would happen for a long time. Hopefully it’s true.
“States like Texas will try to ban these pills but they can’t control the mail.”
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Another good news may be:
Supreme Court justices seem to tilt toward abortion providers in Texas
https://www.npr.org/2021/11/01/1051127442/supreme-court-justices-seem-inclined-to-side-with-abortion-providers-in-texas
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I very much hope that the court will address the egregious vigilante justice aspect of the law–putting bounties on the heads of citizens and empowering other citizens to collect these by ratting out those who attempt to help a friend or family member in crisis.
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Getting pills by mail is not a substitute for legal and safe abortions with medical personnel available for complications.
It also doesn’t address the women who need later abortions because of severe problems with the fetus that are incompatible with life, and also a health danger to the mother.
We still need Roe v. Wade and repealing it is a disaster for women’s health.
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This is a highly simplistic view of when abortions are needed. Not all pregnancies can be terminated in the way you describe.
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“Planned Parenthood clinics have seen dramatic increases in the number of people from Texas going out of state to seek abortions.” (10-1-2021)
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Through gerrymandering, Ohio’s GOP is targeting the longest serving woman
in Congress. The Democratic target described one of the GOP’s goals- dilute the voting power of metropolitan areas.
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If Texas really wanted to reduce abortions, the Governor and legislature could make non consensual condom removal during intercourse illegal, like California just did. That should be a bi-partisan bill.
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Or Texas could pass a law requiring men to wear condoms during intercourse or take full responsibility for any child they father (via DNA).
Gov. Abbott has already declared that he is eliminating rape in Texas.
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And they could provide complete prenatal care, including proper housing and medical care and food, to expectant mothers who haven’t access to these AND adoption services and counseling for those who choose to carry children to term. And they could ensure that no child grows up hungry and neglected, though they don’t seem to have much interest in babies AFTER they are born, except when they IMAGINE that children are being taught Socialism and CRT.
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But, take heart, many of these backward places like Texas and Virginia will be solidly blue before long. That’s what really troubles the sleep of the oligarchs and the Trumpeteers, and it’s the recurring theme of the Tucker Carlson Puffer Fish Imitation Hour.
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I have to disagree with you here. The idea that states “will be solidly blue before long” is a refrain that started back in the mid-90s. I’m looking at the book from the 90s by E.J. Dionne called They Only Look Dead which pretty much made the same argument as I write this. I used to comfort myself with that myth too until the past year. As things are now, I think you and I are more likely to be alive to see the American experiment fail than this blue swing onto which many seem to pin their hopes.
We are only in the beginning of a reactionary process that will completely redefine citizenship, government, and society itself. While we fiddle with semantics and Pyrrhic victories, the enemies of the Constitution have already achieved their minimal goal–to completely stifle the possibility of broadly shared political and governing ideas to be implemented. And the Reichstag moment we’ve been waiting for will likely be a slowly moving, but deliberate series of coordinated laws from the federal to state level and the complete emasculation of the independent judiciary. Much of the groundwork is laid, 2024 is now just a formality. Because even if they don’t take power, they will not let governmental power be exercises except in limited ways, like the police and military.
And it’s all in the open for people to see how lies and distortions become accepted truths. It’s all right in front of us if we care look. See the Ohio redistricting processes and Texas to see your future. We may even have been getting the narrative wrong about the privatization and deliberate destruction of public education. Perhaps it’s never been about the grifters; they were only middlemen in a much bigger game. Creating a new governing framework that works only for a reactionary minority that will never ever allow a whiff of “solid blue” anything. Look at the voluminous evidence available for verification.
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Yes, Greg. It could go that way too. I watched the last Repugnican Convention and thought, OMG., where is Leni Riefenstahl. I even made a list of some 30 fascist tropes used repeatedly throughout it.
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I think that the smarter Repugnicans–the real movers and shakers–are very much aware that these tides are against them and are working hard on countering them by the means that Greg so astutely discusses.
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See my note to Mate below, Greg.
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Well, you are right that nonviolent change happens very slowly—unless there is an economic reason for a change, as it happened in 1989 when the Soviet block fell apart, and Socialism suffered a mortal wound in Europe and elsewhere due to poor economic output and morality.
Another 4 years of Trumpism, especially combined with the pandemic, might have resulted in such economic collapse.
I add that this peaceful downturn of the Soviet system has mixed results, since economic power has remained in the same hands, and the millionaires and billionaires in that region have solid background in pre 1989 Socialist dictatorial leadership and security apparatus.
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I must say as well, Greg, that in my worst moments, looking at the current Supreme Court, witnessing the voter suppression gambits, reading the Espinoza decision, and so on, I wonder whether I shall have some of my posts here and on my own blog read out to me in some future version of Orwell’s Room 101.
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“unless there is an economic reason for a change”
Yeah. I often think that we might be one strong downturn away from a The Man in the High Castle version of the United States.
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I understand all your points, including the ones below. I once agreed with many of them. But I see a future when, for example, Black Lives Matter demonstrations are brutally put down by police and it will not cause a second thought to those governing and their supporters. And as I remind people too much, violence is a first policy choice of fascists. When they gain power, you’d better believe that there will be no restraints on exercising it. Especially since they will be able to create their own realities by then.
I do not have faith in young people as saviors. Some yes, like any group. Vast majority? No. Talking the talk without walking the walk, to put it simply. They can’t just show up every four-to-eight years and expect or hope for anything. And as the history of Gleichschaltung proves, once the power mechanisms are aligned, many of those left-leaning, sort of liberals get right into line. I mean quickly. Virginia was a wake up call. We can dance around the edges politically and continue to lose, or we can start speaking with truth about the existential threat this nation will soon arguably face, including the Civil War.
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I am currently reading a long lost novel that has recently come to light about a Jew in Germany in the immediate aftermath of Kristallnacht. It’s by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz (what a captivating and tragic life’s story he had) and I think has been translated into The Passenger, although I may be wrong.
As much as I think I know about that era, I was never struck before by how quickly people change. How people considered reliable neighbors, known over decades, their kids went to school together, how quickly they turned their backs on decency out of a combination of fear, greed, ignorance, and no desire or courage to do anything about it.
Now that I’m doing limited traveling again, I’ve noticed a great change. Because one doesn’t interact as much, one observes more. I wonder about that as I see that 30-ish woman over there, so engrossed in watching some reality show on her phone for 90 min in the waiting area and another 90 on the flight (no, I didn’t watch her the whole time, it was just noticeable!). Or the Lyft driver who confidently sneers he doesn’t need a vaccine because he’s “got natural immunity,” the code is not hard to decipher. There are millions like them, and they decide our fates either by their actions or more probably, their inaction.
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And as to your Orwell comment above, I find myself thinking and observing things I would never have thought possible just ten, even five, years ago. Perhaps even the day before yesterday. When I compare the teacher I was in the 80s to the person I am today, the former would think the latter to be needlessly fatalistic, the latter considers the former to idealistic to see the world for what it has become. It’s not just the U.S.
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When I was a young coach, every season I inevitably came to the same speech: it’s easier to win games if you’re destructive, but we’re going to keep trying to play constructive, whether we get a trophy or not. I wish I could still listen to myself.
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Greg, you are, alas, quite persuasive.
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Bob, the Southern, Civil War era mentality has survived for 150 years, so I wonder what estimate you have in mind when you say “before long”.
Here, in TN, every distance or time estimate has to be multiplied by at least 2. An unspecified time may very well mean “forever” or “never”.
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I am encouraged by two phenomena: a) the fact that young people in the U.S., when polled, are on the opposite side from the Repugnicans on every issue and b) the changing demographics of the country. The latter is what has folks like Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump going apoplectic about “white replacement theory.” These tides are very much against the Repugnicans, and their margins in elections have been extremely thin in places like Texas, Arizona, Florida, and Virginia.
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I wish things would turn solidly blue before long but it’s not looking good in many states. We only have two viable parties, eventually the GOP will get back in power to undo any positive actions of the Democrats. On a positive note, Murphy did retain power in NJ and he’s the first Democrat in 50 years to win two terms. That fat blob Chris Christie had 8 years to undermine education in NJ. Side note: some big NJ Democrats aided and abetted Christie for his 2nd term. The big fat cat Democrats stabbed the Democratic candidate, Barbara Buono, in the back. Just insane and crazy, I have never seen anything like that before, Buono was so disgusted for the betrayal by her own party that she eventually moved out of state. Other good news in NJ: the Democrats in my district 16 beat out the GOP candidates, it was very close.
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!!!!!!
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Joe, I never thought, when I was 16, that the country would be so backward today. It’s shocking, horrifying. Nothing like what I thought the future would be.
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I’ve been pining for the good old days when all we had to worry about was nuclear war and mutually assured destruction. And at least that bred a tenuous unity at home. Now the destruction doesn’t have to be mutual anymore.
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I’ve also been pining for the fjords.
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Conservative religion’s targets- abortion and birth control. Women who vote Republican aren’t smart enough or awake enough to see the attacks on the horizon- all of women’s rights.
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There is no doubt that the ideology behind much of the recent backward actions, such as the TX abortion mess, is religion. It seems sensless that the forefathers wanted to separate church and state while allowing large religious gatherings. What were they thinking? That the masses will not bring religious ideas into real life decision making? Or they simply didn’t want to make the work of future governments to be too easy? All they would have had to do is write somewhere that religions and other ideologies should be practiced and discussed only privately.
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There was a very interesting and enlightening discussion of the TX abortion case and the role of SCOTUS in it on NPR today. In summary, SCOTUS will probably rule that the TX law is not OK and can be challenged in lower courts, since they don’t want to appear overly partizan because people eventually will ignore them. On the other hand, SCOTUS probably very soon will rule that they leave the whole abortion issue to be delegated to the states, since they don’t want to deal with it ad infinitum.
https://www.npr.org/2021/11/03/1051963739/sb8-roe-v-wade-plus-jo-firestones-good-timing
Mark Joseph Stern is an amazingly clear interpreter of legal matters.
https://twitter.com/mjs_DC?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
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Religion’s public policy influence was hemmed in when there was enforcement of the laws about church politicking and, before John Paul II called on American Catholics to get active in the public square.
The Koch network capitalized on the opportunity, forging a GOP bulwark. Pat Buchanan’s site spells out the goal in the selection of Judge Scalia to solidify GOP control.
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Thanks again for this information.
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