TechyDad

In many of the cases that Republicans refuse abortions for, there is no baby at the end. If a woman is at risk of dying and the fetus has such severe abnormalities that it will breathe twice and die, then what’s the argument against an abortion? It could save the woman’s life and wouldn’t “kill a baby” (even if I accepted that abortion killed a baby - which I don’t).

But the Republican line seems to be that a woman needs to be actively dying before they’ll even start to consider allowing her to have a life saving medical procedure.

That’s okay. They can still sing “Born in the USA” because that song is super-patriotic and not critical of America at all.

Oh, wait…

Weren’t some hostages also drugged so they’d be “happy and smiling” for the cameras when released? I heard that, but don’t know the authenticity.

Edit: I found many news sources that said they were. I know some folks don’t trust anything Israel says so take reports like this with a grain of salt. Still, it’s been confirmed that many of the hostages were drugged while in captivity. Especially the kids - to keep them quiet. (Anyone with little kids knows they can be loud while scared and this must have been extremely scary. As a father, the reaction of “drug the little kids” makes me angry.)

Don’t forget that the Hamas leaders are living in luxury as billionaires in Qatar. If the Israeli response kills a few thousand Palestinians, then Hamas’ leaders will shrug their shoulders and say “sounds like good PR” while lounging in a hot tub.

There are pockets of NY, outside of NYC, that are blue. The big areas that are red are mostly rural counties. But land doesn’t vote, people do, so it doesn’t matter if 1,000 people in a huge area vote red when 100,000 people in a small city vote blue.

You’re right that NYC helps keep us blue, but they aren’t the only ones. In 2020, NY voted for Biden over Trump 60.8% to 37.7%. If we removed NYC’s counties, NY would have still voted for Biden, but at a much closer 52.4% to 45.9%.

Biden has called this out. A lot of companies are still raising prices or aren’t letting prices fall. They’re still saying “oh, this is inflation causing this” while their costs fall and their profits rise.

Biden can’t stop them singlehandedly. (He’s a President, not a Supreme Dictator.) But he can call them out on it and use what powers he has to bear down on them somewhat if they don’t stop.

It might not get all of them to stop (some might risk fines because the profits would be greater), but hopefully it will direct the anger towards the actual culprits - big companies taking advantage of past inflation to raise prices.

Now? During the 2016 Republican primaries, Trump insisted that he had large hands and large genitalia because one of the other candidates said he had small hands.

Trump has never been dignified.

$175,000 for 50 years? He’s 71 now so he went into prison at 21. That means he spent virtually his entire life in prison. He could have done so many things, but instead he needed to sit in a prison cell. All because he was wrongly convicted.

And because I’m a math geek and need to figure this stuff out, $175,000 over 50 years is $3,500 a year. If we calculate what he would have earned at the federal minimum wage over that time frame (ignoring bank account interest or inflation just to keep things simple), we’d get over $500,000.

They’re giving him a third of what he should have earned at bare minimum. (And that ignores all the other horrible things involved with being wrongfully imprisoned for 50 years.)

I needed Unicode symbols for a story I’m working on. (I want to use them as “magic runes” so I could type them into a document, but without using the standard “runes” that are typically used.)

Shape Catcher let me draw what I was looking for and then get a list of Unicode characters that matched that drawing. It’s not exact so if there’s no perfect Unicode match, it will give you ones that are close. This actually turned out to my benefit as I found shapes I hadn’t considered but which worked nicely for my uses.

Did you read what I wrote? It’s not that they decided they weren’t going to do anything. It’s that the rules of the government limit what they can do with a small majority. They can’t just unilaterally decide that they are passing a new constitutional amendment with a few vote majority in the House/Senate. They could try for a bill, but there they are limited by various other rules not to mention the conservative Supreme Court. If the Democrats had a big enough majority, they could get more bills passed.

And that being said, what’s the alternative? Allow the Republicans to get into power and hope that they don’t take away women’s rights too much? Many Republicans have already declared that they want a national abortion ban. Others have said that they want to criminalize miscarriage and ban contraception.

Voting third party (thanks to our First Past The Post system) won’t work. Sitting out the elections and not voting won’t work. The best thing to do is get as many Democrats in office as possible from local positions to the highest offices. Then, put pressure on the higher up Democrats to get a women’s rights bill passed.

At this point, and with our current political system, not supporting the Democratic candidate is essentially supporting the Republican one.

The Democrats could have passed a bill, but “enshrining it in the Constitution” would mean passing a Constitutional amendment. First, they would need a 2/3rds vote of Congress. That means that the Democrats couldn’t have a slim majority - they’d need a large majority. Or they’d need to find Republicans willing to vote for a Constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights. Basically an impossibility.

Even if the Democrats managed to get the Constitutional Right To Abortion passed, they would need to have 75% of the state legislatures pass it. Democrats don’t control that name state legislatures.

So perhaps the Democrats could have passed a national law, right? Except that the Republicans would inevitably filibuster this in the Senate. The Democrats could have changed the filibuster rules, but not all of them supported changing these rules. (Mainly because it would prevent them from stopping the Republicans if the Republicans regained the Senate.) Any law that was passed would inevitably have been challenged up to the conservative Supreme Court.

You could definitely criticize the Democrats for not pushing harder to pass a law guaranteeing abortion, but a Constitutional Amendment was out of reach.

And it’s not only the population, but its GDP is tiny. Back when Russia first invaded Ukraine, I wondered how big Russia would be if it were a US state. I compared the GDP per Capita of all US states to Russia’s.

Mississippi’s GDP per Capita was almost 4 times larger than Russia’s. Mississippi! I finally went into the US territories to find one that Russia could top (American Samoa).

And, in case you’re thinking “well, that’s GDP per Capita, they’d dwarf all US states in GDP,” they’d be the third largest state behind California and Texas and just ahead of New York. The US as a whole has a GDP over 10 times larger than Russia.

And this woman also WANTS to have the baby. She and her husband were trying to get pregnant. Unfortunately, the fetus has abnormalities that mean it won’t survive. Without an abortion, she will need to wait until she hits term, have a C Section, and then have a dead baby.

Oh, and thanks to her medical history, she’ll likely be unable to have another pregnancy after that C-section. So it’s either give birth to a dead baby now and have no more or have an abortion now and (after she recovers) try to have another baby. Only one of these options might result in a baby that’s alive and it’s the option that includes abortion.

But Paxton will scream about how he’s “protecting the unborn baby” without caring that the fetus has a nearly zero chance of survival and without caring that the woman faces potential severe (possibly life threatening) medical complications if she’s forced to continue the pregnancy. He’ll force women to carry pregnancies to term even if it kills them!

The Red State Brain Drain continues. Professors leaving Florida. OB/GYN doctors leaving Texas.

Why would you want to work in a place that criminalizes your job?

Even worse are the people saying they won’t vote for Biden in 2024 because they don’t agree with him 100% on certain issues when Trump would be even worse on those issues.

I understand not liking a politician completely. Hillary wasn’t my first pick in 2016 and Biden wasn’t my first pick in 2020. However, when it became clear that they were the nominee, I backed them over Trump. I’m sure some of these people will back Biden if/when he’s the nominee, but a lot of them are declaring that they will sit out the elections if Biden is the nominee because they want things done differently. Meanwhile, if Trump is elected - say, because some left wing voters stay home - these issues will be treated a whole lot worse!

And don’t forget the “life of the mother” exceptions in places like Texas that can only be triggered if the woman is actively dying. If she’s not close enough to death, it is still “carry it to term or else.”

And also because the Republicans can project their views on those groups.

“If the ‘unborn baby’ or dead soldier could talk, they’d say that we should absolutely overturn this election result and name Trump President again. After all, he will protect the unborn (unless they happen to reside in his mistress) and what did those soldiers die for if not President For Life Trump?!!!”

I think there are four factors at play here. They’re mixed together in an extremely messy fashion and overlap quite a bit, but they are:

1. The people on both sides fear for their safety. The Palestinians fear the Israeli government and military taking action against them. The Israeli people fear rocket attacks and raids like the one that just happened. When a populace lives in fear, it leads to -

2. Extremist groups are in charge. You have Hamas on one side whose stated goal is to kill all Jews. (Not just in Israel, but across the world.) You have the right wing Israeli government on the other side who push for horrible actions against the Palestinians in the name of “safety.”

3. Foreign interference. Iran on one side is arming/helping Hamas. On the other side, evangelical Christians help the settlers and push the Israeli government because they think Jesus will come back if Israel suffers a big enough attack. (Peace would prevent that attack and stop Jesus from returning.)

4. A long and bloody history. Both sides remember when they were killed by the other side. Both sides refuse to leave the past in the past and intend on making the other side pay. The problem here is that the cycle of violence never breaks. If you always have to attack because “they did X to us” then they will feel like they always need to attack because you did Y to them. It goes around and around and never changes no matter how much everyone suffers.

How do you untangle this mess? If I knew that, I’d have the Nobel Peace Prize. I wish I did know. I’d set the peace prize aside in a second, tell the world what to do, and stop it all. Unfortunately, I’m no diplomat. (Some of the best diplomats have failed in this arena.) I can see what’s going on, but I have no clue how to stop it.

The best I can think of is that perhaps UN security forces need to move in. Not to attack one side or another, but to keep both sides away from each other. Sort of like the national version of putting two kids who were fighting in time out until things cool down. But again, I’m no diplomat so for all I know that would make things worse.

The problem, even if we reinstated this, is that this applied to broadcast only. This wouldn’t apply to cable channels. Neither would it apply to Internet groups. Both of those would still be free to spout full blown lies and conspiracy theories dressed up as “news.”

The biggest thing that I can see that needs to be done would be shutting down “news” organizations like FOX News, OAN, and Newsmax. Also, breaking up online movements like Q where blatant misinformation is spread as if it’s proven truth.

Now, HOW you do that without massive first amendment violations, I don’t know. You would also need to be careful how it’s structured because that could easily be used to shut down anyone left of center should a Republicans take the presidency/control Congress.