All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Tami]

Sarah Huckabee Sanders after her gubernatorial primary win: "We will make sure that when a kid is in the womb, they're as safe as they are in a classroom."

Um.

Twitter Link with Video

[Mister Mets]

I agree in part. With this court, as long as totally biased Clarence Thomas is alive, Loving won't be overturned. Three sane judges, John Roberts trying to hold the middle, and interracial married Thomas = five.

There are other reasons Loving V. Virginia won't be overturned. Alito, ACB, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch don't want to overturn it either.

First, there isn't much of a political move to do so. Interracial marriage is broadly popular, and it has grown more popular overtime (as of a year ago, it was at 94 percent.)

https://news.gallup.com/poll/354638/...-new-high.aspx

There is a reliance interest in marriages staying intact, as well as people having the ability to get engaged to their beloved.
Virginia V. Loving was a unanimous decision, based on an understanding of the 14th amendment that is generally accepted today.

It is worth noting that Clarence Thomas grew up in the segregated south when Plessy V. Ferguson was the law of the land, which may be part of why he doesn't give much value to precedent.

This is by design, the right wants a pipeline of minority children straight to prison so they can exploit their for profit prison system and prison labor (IE Slavery with extra steps). Rep. Miller's (you know, the one that quoted Hitler before) "victory for white life" comment was no mistake, the Republican party are the new Nazis.

This seems ridiculous.

You are asking me to respond to a comment I did not make, I didn't so you will have to talk to them. So what is your opinion on this ruling, and Gay Marriage, and gun laws in your State and Miranda?
And while we are at it, are you supporting anti-abortion, Trumper Lee Zeldin for Giovernor? (Who will pardon Trump in NY if he gets elected)

Or do you just want to stick with some conjectures some made and avoid talking about what is actually happening?

You asked a question about positions in response to a post in which I wrote "What position do I hold that is so unreasonable?"

That's why I was asking your view on that question. There seems to be something a bit sketchy here where one person says something outrageous, and then the discussion is used as a chance to go after me, without everyone addressing the goalpost of whether a comment is good or bad.

My views are coming in the next post.

Again. I did not call you a troll, you have responded to my comments and I am responding to yours. Not what somewhat else said. Let othewrs explain their comments about you, I can't. But seems you are avoiding a straight forward question. I'll start, these recent rulings are an abomination. You?

You're responding to the same post twice, which makes the criticism of avoiding a straight answer sketchy.

[kidfresh512]

Legal clashes await U.S. companies covering workers' abortion costs

A growing number of large U.S. companies have said they will cover travel costs for employees who must leave their home states to get abortions, but these new policies could expose businesses to lawsuits and even potential criminal liability, legal experts said.

Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), Apple Inc (AAPL.O), Lyft Inc (LYFT.O), Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) were among companies that announced plans to provide those benefits through their health insurance plans in anticipation of Friday's U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that had legalized abortion nationwide.

Within an hour of the decision being released, Conde Nast chief executive Roger Lynch sent a memo to staff announcing a travel reimbursement policy and calling the court's ruling "a crushing blow to reproductive rights." Walt Disney Co (DIS.N) unveiled a similar policy on Friday, telling employees that it recognizes the impact of the abortion ruling but remains committed to providing comprehensive access to quality healthcare, according to a spokesman.

Interesting article talking about the legal ramifications corporations will likely face that are supporting their employees with healthcare related costs in areas where there will now be abortion bans. GOP always claim to be pro business. And how often were private, or employer healthcare plans brought up to oppose Obamacare? But, they will clearly fight these plans now just like they did with mask mandates companies tried to enact for the health of their employees.

[Mister Mets]

Incidentally, here are my views on recent decisions. I've covered some of it before.

I think Roe V. Wade was poorly decided, so I'm generally in favor of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

As a legal matter, abortion should be a state issue. The ideal policy would be something like what Glenn Youngkin is proposing in Virginia; for abortion to be legal in the first 15 weeks with exceptions later for rape, incest and cases where the life of the mother is at risk. Some states will go with bad policies.

There has been a push for a federal ban on abortion. It seems unlikely that this will occur.

I don't think gay marriage or Obergfell are going anywhere. A majority of Republicans are against discrimination of LGBTQ people by employers.
https://www.kff.org/other/press-rele...are-providers/

Clarence Thomas' comments on Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergfell were about how he thinks certain decisions need a new legal rationale given his view of the Court’s substantive due process precedents. This doesn't mean he wants to reverse the decisions, and it doesn't seem that he has much support for it for his view on this question.

From what I've heard, I agree with the court's decision in Bruen. The Court made clear that states are still allowed to require a license to carry a firearm in public, and expressly declined to interfere with the public carry regimes of all the remaining states—including those that require firearm training and deny applicants who pose a danger to public safety, so states can continue to require applicants to meet public safety requirements before carrying a gun in public, and prohibit guns in “sensitive places” such as schools, government buildings, polling places, and courthouses. The main argument was that New York's law was capricious, and that doesn't work for a constitutional right.

I don't think the Miranda decision is going to make a big difference.
In the Republican gubernatorial primary, my preferred candidate is businessman Harry Wilson. I might vote for Zeldin if it looks like there's a serious chance Giuliani will win.

If anyone has other questions for me about my opinions, ask it a non-loaded way and I'll be glad to address it.

[Emperor-of-Dragons]

They were able to do this because they had enough of their base willing to vote for Tea Party candidates during Primaries who beat the establishment Republicans, not by choosing to not vote for establishment Republicans in the General Election. Republican voters of all shades of white still swarmed the polls in 2010, despite which candidate won the Primary, causing a huge reversal of power in Congress. After this happened, it emboldened other fringe right candidates to run in successive Elections.

You're preaching to the choir. I always said the primaries are where the real important elections. They have to be willing to go out and vote and support better candidates, or like it was said earlier you end up with trash like Eric Adams in NYC.

[Tami]

Incidentally, here are my views on recent decisions. I've covered some of it before.

I think Roe V. Wade was poorly decided, so I'm generally in favor of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

As a legal matter, abortion should be a state issue. The ideal policy would be something like what Glenn Youngkin is proposing in Virginia; for abortion to be legal in the first 15 weeks with exceptions later for rape, incest and cases where the life of the mother is at risk. Some states will go with bad policies.

There has been a push for a federal ban on abortion. It seems unlikely that this will occur.

I don't think gay marriage or Obergfell are going anywhere. A majority of Republicans are against discrimination of LGBTQ people by employers.
https://www.kff.org/other/press-rele...are-providers/

Clarence Thomas' comments on Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergfell were about how he thinks certain decisions need a new legal rationale given his view of the Court’s substantive due process precedents. This doesn't mean he wants to reverse the decisions, and it doesn't seem that he has much support for it for his view on this question.

From what I've heard, I agree with the court's decision in Bruen. The Court made clear that states are still allowed to require a license to carry a firearm in public, and expressly declined to interfere with the public carry regimes of all the remaining states—including those that require firearm training and deny applicants who pose a danger to public safety, so states can continue to require applicants to meet public safety requirements before carrying a gun in public, and prohibit guns in “sensitive places” such as schools, government buildings, polling places, and courthouses. The main argument was that New York's law was capricious, and that doesn't work for a constitutional right.

I don't think the Miranda decision is going to make a big difference.
In the Republican gubernatorial primary, my preferred candidate is businessman Harry Wilson. I might vote for Zeldin if it looks like there's a serious chance Giuliani will win.

If anyone has other questions for me about my opinions, ask it a non-loaded way and I'll be glad to address it.

Two comments:

1. Rights are rarely stripped away in one fell swoop, most times they are chipped away piece by piece until nothing is left.
2. When States are given free rein to decide which rights to uphold and which ones to ban (see point 1 above), eventually you will end with about half of the States taking the autocratic route, the other half trying to hold onto Democracy. As a nation, we can no longer call ourselves a Democracy if 50% of the population is living under the dictator's thumb of an autocratic system where they have no rights and those in charge control everything and anything they want, Education, Criminal Justice, Women's Health, Voting, and so on.

Basic Human Rights need to be applied evenly and fairly to everyone in the country, regardless of where they live or what their situation is.

It's just like Gun Control. A state like mine, and yours, can try to regulate guns and reduce gun violence all they want, but if it is not across the board, if it is not a nationwide mandate, then you will still have legal challenges and an influx of guns from states that have little or no controls over gun acquisitions or use.

We are either United or Divided.

[Jack Dracula]

Glad you think they are silly, when at least 4 Justices want to undo those Rights and last count I saw 9 States have passed ending Gay Marriage trigger laws.

Let's remember that these abortion and Gay Marriage "trigger laws" aren't the result of some grassroots movement within those particular states. The legislators who submitted them likely didn't write them. They came from ALEC and the Heritage Foundation which are both funded by dark money from wealthy donors and corporations.
All of these 2nd amendment, anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ, anti-CRT laws are being driven and funded and distributed nationwide from one or two sources.

Edit: The other important point to remember is the most recent Judges who were appointed to the SCOTUS were from a short list submitted to Trump by the Federalist Society, a group that shares membership with the other two.

[CaptainEurope]

I have a question for WBE and for anyone else who can answer

Aside from Ron DeSantis, are there any other Republicans hinting at a possible run for President in 2024?

I'm trying to figure out how many are Trump Wannabes, aka, how many are following his MAGA lead and seeing themselves as the next Dictator of the US?

Nobody understands why he thinks he has a base, but Pence clearly thinks he can run.

[CSTowle]

He's no longer running -- amongst other consequences, thank goodness.



https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/26/us/rh...est/index.html

Small favors.

[Mister Mets]

Two comments:

1. Rights are rarely stripped away in one fell swoop, most times they are chipped away piece by piece until nothing is left.
2. When States are given free rein to decide which rights to uphold and which ones to ban (see point 1 above), eventually you will end with about half of the States taking the autocratic route, the other half trying to hold onto Democracy. As a nation, we can no longer call ourselves a Democracy if 50% of the population is living under the dictator's thumb of an autocratic system where they have no rights and those in charge control everything and anything they want, Education, Criminal Justice, Women's Health, Voting, and so on.

Basic Human Rights need to be applied evenly and fairly to everyone in the country, regardless of where they live or what their situation is.

It's just like Gun Control. A state like mine, and yours, can try to regulate guns and reduce gun violence all they want, but if it is not across the board, if it is not a nationwide mandate, then you will still have legal challenges and an influx of guns from states that have little or no controls over gun acquisitions or use.

We are either United or Divided.

We have a government where there is great variation between states.

This is understandable. There may be different needs for gun protection in a state that is sparsely populated as opposed to a state that is mostly urban. National voting laws would be complicated by the fact that different jurisdictions will have different policies (open primaries vs closed primaries, should there be runoffs if someone fails to clear a thresshold?, should there be ranked choice voting?, are elections for local office partisan or non-partisan?) as we don't have a definitive answer for the best approach.

If all the big decisions were made nationally, it prevents states from being laboratories of democracy. We won't have situations like where Colorado decriminalized marijuana, and other states are able to look at the data before considering that they too would like that sweet, sweet tax money. Elections will be much more heated because it will be more consequential when Congress has more power over local quality of life.

Decent people can be opposed to the idea of different laws for different jurisdictions, but it is the current law. To change it, we would need major decisions by legislators and executives.

There are some rights that apply to all Americans. The 14th amendment prevents states from being able to ignore national laws and constitutional amendments.

I have a question for WBE and for anyone else who can answer

Aside from Ron DeSantis, are there any other Republicans hinting at a possible run for President in 2024?

I'm trying to figure out how many are Trump Wannabes, aka, how many are following his MAGA lead and seeing themselves as the next Dictator of the US?

Pence is laying the groundwork.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...24/9895534002/

Tom Cotton is meeting with donors.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/0...-race-00039476

Larry Hogan has expressed interest.

https://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2022/...term-maryland/

So has Chris Christie.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/01/polit...024/index.html

Nikki Haley is visiting early primary states.

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/st...nt/9797040002/

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson says he wants to do it.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...omination-2024

Ted Cruz claims he's the frontrunner.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/1...ination-525973

Others mentioned include Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and both Senator Scotts (Tim and Rick)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...nt-2024-trump/

[shooshoomanjoe]

Twitter Link with Video

IMO, she's trolling school shootings.

[Kirby101]

Incidentally, here are my views on recent decisions. I've covered some of it before.

I think Roe V. Wade was poorly decided, so I'm generally in favor of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

As a legal matter, abortion should be a state issue. The ideal policy would be something like what Glenn Youngkin is proposing in Virginia; for abortion to be legal in the first 15 weeks with exceptions later for rape, incest and cases where the life of the mother is at risk. Some states will go with bad policies.

There has been a push for a federal ban on abortion. It seems unlikely that this will occur.

I don't think gay marriage or Obergfell are going anywhere. A majority of Republicans are against discrimination of LGBTQ people by employers.
https://www.kff.org/other/press-rele...are-providers/

So you are fine with some States banning ALL abortions, even for rape, incest and health of the mother? And putting women and doctors in prison for abortions? OK.

And since when did the Republican Party do what it's voters wanted when it comes to progressive issues? A majority of Republicans want stricter gun laws including universal background checks, waiting periods and not giving guns to terrorists. Has your Party done anything but oppose those. So don't make me laugh with your Obergefell comment.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisond...h=39d4d31573db

The Morning Consult/Politico poll found 86% of Republicans strongly or somewhat support background checks for all gun sales (versus 88% of all respondents), 73% imposing a mandatory three-day waiting period for gun sales (80% overall), 63% implementing a national database of gun sales (75% overall), and 53% banning high-capacity magazines (69% overall). At least 75% of Republicans also favor barring gun sales for people on the no-fly list, those who a mental health provider has deemed “dangerous” and those convicted of violent misdemeanors.

[Darkspellmaster]

The head of the Church here in Cincinnati said this was a great victory and mothers and families should not worry because there is so much help out there for single mothers and poorer familes.

And I hope France is able to vote the right into law. I hope this makes every country that has these rights sit up and take notice. They need to make them law.

Damn morons. Even the Pilgrims and the Italians would do it too.
What is their issue with all of this.

This is by design, the right wants a pipeline of minority children straight to prison so they can exploit their for profit prison system and prison labor (IE Slavery with extra steps). Rep. Miller's (you know, the one that quoted Hitler before) "victory for white life" comment was no mistake, the Republican party are the new Nazis.

Of course it is.

Laughable, if it weren't so tragically wrong.

As usual, the Republicans make laws restricting women, but do nothing about helping children, or making men responsible.

Where's the law for, and enforcement, of "child" support from men upon conception (a ridiculous idea that is actually now a state law)?

Where's the law for, and enforcement, of pre-natal care and maternity leave?

Where's the law closing down the IVF clinics, with all their abandoned and discarded "pre-born"?

Where's the law for mandatory vasectomies?

And where the heck are all the people screaming about Sharia Law and the constitution while literally imposing Christian Fundamentalism "laws" in various states? What happened to separation of church and state, FFS?!

These hypocrites are beyond disgusting.

Thank you. Separation went out the door when we started to let televangelist on the air.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

We have a government where there is great variation between states.

This is understandable. There may be different needs for gun protection in a state that is sparsely populated as opposed to a state that is mostly urban. National voting laws would be complicated by the fact that different jurisdictions will have different policies (open primaries vs closed primaries, should there be runoffs if someone fails to clear a thresshold?, should there be ranked choice voting?, are elections for local office partisan or non-partisan?) as we don't have a definitive answer for the best approach.

If all the big decisions were made nationally, it prevents states from being laboratories of democracy. We won't have situations like where Colorado decriminalized marijuana, and other states are able to look at the data before considering that they too would like that sweet, sweet tax money. Elections will be much more heated because it will be more consequential when Congress has more power over local quality of life.

Decent people can be opposed to the idea of different laws for different jurisdictions, but it is the current law. To change it, we would need major decisions by legislators and executives.

There are some rights that apply to all Americans. The 14th amendment prevents states from being able to ignore national laws and constitutional amendments.

Pence is laying the groundwork.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...24/9895534002/

Tom Cotton is meeting with donors.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/0...-race-00039476

Larry Hogan has expressed interest.

https://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2022/...term-maryland/

So has Chris Christie.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/01/polit...024/index.html

Nikki Haley is visiting early primary states.

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/st...nt/9797040002/

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson says he wants to do it.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...omination-2024

Ted Cruz claims he's the frontrunner.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/1...ination-525973

Others mentioned include Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and both Senator Scotts (Tim and Rick)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...nt-2024-trump/

Pence is delusional to think he has even a puncher’s chance after he refused to go all in on the Big Lie. Trump, who lives for grudges, will make sure Pence fails should he run.

Cotton? Hogan? Hutchinson? Youngkin? Pompeo? HA! Please!

Christie? The Outlaw Jersey Whale has too many oversized skeletons in his closest (Bridgegate) to be a viable candidate.

Haley is wasting her time. No way in hell the misogynistic GQP will get behind a female candidate.

Cruz can boast all he wants about being the front runner, but it’s all in his imagination.

[Mister Mets]

Pence is delusional to think he has even a puncher’s chance after he refused to go all in on the Big Lie. Trump, who lives for grudges, will make sure Pence fails should he run.

Cotton? Hogan? Hutchinson? Youngkin? Pompeo? HA! Please!

Christie? The Outlaw Jersey Whale has too many oversized skeletons in his closest (Bridgegate) to be a viable candidate.

Haley is wasting her time. No way in hell the misogynistic GQP will get behind a female candidate.

Cruz can boast all he wants about being the front runner, but it’s all in his imagination.

There's a different question about who has a shot of winning.

At the moment, it's mainly Trump and DeSantis. It's conceivable that there'll be an opening for someone else as new developments occur in the next two years, but their combined odds are probably around fifteen percent.

So you are fine with some States banning ALL abortions, even for rape, incest and health of the mother? And putting women and doctors in prison for abortions? OK.

And since when did the Republican Party do what it's voters wanted when it comes to progressive issues? A majority of Republicans want stricter gun laws including universal background checks, waiting periods and not giving guns to terrorists. Has your Party done anything but oppose those. So don't make me laugh with your Obergefell comment.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisond...h=39d4d31573db

I don't think I said I was fine with some states banning all abortions.

It would be a bad policy.

I don't think it matters for you in that you would be against abortion bans, and believe the Supreme Court made the wrong call, even if every state had exceptions for rape, incest and the health of the mother, or if abortion penalties were implemented through civil courts, sort of how some Democrats want to deal with immigration.

A distinction with gun rights is that the questions are vague. There are frequent references to common-sense reforms, which allows a person being polled to substitute their preferred policies. The numbers are different when people are polled on legislation that would have a meaningful impact.

I posted this before, but Matthew Yglesias summed it up well.

And yet in a maddening way, the measures progressives are proposing would not address the policy issue that progressives claim is morally urgent.

Effective gun control would have to be extreme
Here’s the deal: There are about 40,000 firearms deaths per year in the United States and if you could make them go away that would be great.

But a majority of those deaths are suicides. And the homicides are mostly committed by normal, inexpensive easily concealed handguns, not by scary assault weapons. Where do the guns come from? In a 2016 report for the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Mariel Alper and Lauren Glaze look at a survey of prison inmates and found that 21 percent of all federal and state prisoners said they had a firearm when they committed the offense for which they were serving time in prison. Of those incarcerated gun owners, just “seven percent had purchased it under their own name from a licensed firearm dealer.”

The largest share (43 percent) said they bought the gun on the black market. Another 25 percent say they got it from family or friends.

None of this is to deny that gun control laws could drastically reduce the incidence of firearms death. You might think that potential suicides would just substitute some other means of killing themselves, but research does not bare that out. If fewer guns were around, then fewer people would kill themselves. By the same token, you definitely could drain the swamp of illegally circulating firearms. But the way you would accomplish these things would be by drastically reducing the number of legally owned guns around. Stricter background checks for new purchases just aren’t going to significantly change the situation.

The United Kingdom has drastically fewer gun assaults than we do and that has a lot of benefits. Not only are innocent lives saved, but it allows their police to operate largely unarmed which would greatly ameliorate a tangled nexus of American social problems around racism and police use of force. But the UK didn’t get there with really rigorous background checks, it got there by making civilian ownership of guns mostly illegal.

What’s more: Gun enthusiasts are aware of this. So when progressives talk about the tragedy of gun deaths in America, it doesn’t matter if their actual proposal is a very mild tweak to background checks. When you define “the problem” as gun deaths, you are pushing toward a drastic solution that gun hobbyists don’t want, and they are highly motivated to vote against you.