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

[Mister Mets]

That is rude and unnecessarily provocative. By the same token, we could say that somebody who does not care about women bleeding to death in a back alley would propose such a deal.

Not necessarily.

The people who take global warming most seriously believe it is an existential threat, that if we do not handle it immediately mankind will go extinct from it. If this were the case, anything would have to be on the table, because the alternative is so terrible.

You can believe that a policy will have bad consequences, but that it is worth the tradeoff.

[Johnathan]

Not necessarily.

The people who take global warming most seriously believe it is an existential threat, that if we do not handle it immediately mankind will go extinct from it. If this were the case, anything would have to be on the table, because the alternative is so terrible.

You can believe that a policy will have bad consequences, but that it is worth the tradeoff.

It's a good point. Often, the "solutions" will also only provide new problems while not solving anything.

It's unlikely that illegalizing abortion, for example, will actually stop people from getting abortions, but it will make it less safe. Just as making drug abuse a law enforcement problem didn't really have much of an effect on stopping drug abuse.

[Tendrin]

We can solve the threat of climate change without stripping women of their bodily automony, thanks. We can take it seriously without thinking that we should negotiate with people who can't imagine a future where they don't control women.

The rights of broad swaths of the populace don't need to be on the negotiating table just because reactionaries exist, and there's no reason to believe that such a negotiation would stop at erasing the rights of women, after all.

It's ludicrous to even suggest as some kind of 'gotcha' that people who don't want to shove women into back alley abortions CLEARLY don't take climate change seriously because they're not willing to sacrifice women's bodily autonomy. I'd like the future to be livable. I'd also like it to be worth living.

[Mister Mets]

It's a good point. Often, the "solutions" will also only provide new problems while not solving anything.

It's unlikely that illegalizing abortion, for example, will actually stop people from getting abortions, but it will make it less safe. Just as making drug abuse a law enforcement problem didn't really have much of an effect on stopping drug abuse.

I'll post evidence on the matter later but this isn't necessarily true. Bans on abortion do result in significant declines in abortion rates, even if there are going to be significant drawbacks (medical complications from back- alley abortions, police devoting resources to investigations, unwanted children growing up in poverty.) In Freakonomics the authors suggested an increase in abortion access was one of the causes of the decline in crime in the 1990s.

Likewise drug and alcohol consumption increases with legalization. At the same time the quality and safety improve as it goes from underground to regulated.

[JCAll]

Not necessarily.

The people who take global warming most seriously believe it is an existential threat, that if we do not handle it immediately mankind will go extinct from it. If this were the case, anything would have to be on the table, because the alternative is so terrible.

You can believe that a policy will have bad consequences, but that it is worth the tradeoff.

I'm shocked you've stuck by this position so long, since it's still the most horrible thing I've ever heard in my life. Demanding the right to do whatever you want to whoever you want, or you'll kill the whole world including yourself out of spite.
And Republicans want thanked for it, like an abusive spouse shouting that it's our fault for making you murder the whole world instead of just the parts you wanted. Or like gods on high demanding prayers and sacrifice to stave off their indiscriminate wrath.

[Kirby101]

The last "grand bargain" I remember like this was women's suffrage in return for prohibition. The latter so disastrous that it needed repeal. But at least that was giving a right in return for an ill-beotten idea.
To think that Republicans will ever do what is necessary to fight Climate Change in return for any of their horrible agenda is as ludicrous as the Munich Accords.

[Dalak]

Not necessarily.

The people who take global warming most seriously believe it is an existential threat, that if we do not handle it immediately mankind will go extinct from it. If this were the case, anything would have to be on the table, because the alternative is so terrible.

You can believe that a policy will have bad consequences, but that it is worth the tradeoff.

You are forgetting the intransigence of the right currently, they will take whatever is offered and refuse to do their part 19 times in 20 at best. You are essentially asking if we'd work with people who are willing to die over not wearing masks and trust them to put themselves in MUCH more uncomfortable situations for the wellbeing of everyone (Which they've proved they will not do). Even assuming they would accept it and follow through, they'd be willing to throw all of humanity under the bus just to regain control of the uterus and I don't think that sort of mentality should be rewarded in any way. It lets them think they can continue to do it and get away with it and I'd rather shut that sort of thing down ASAP.

If it means we all die, I'm of the mindset that we'd die anyway trading away everything in the vain hopes they'd actually work to help everyone rather than just themselves.

[Johnathan]

I'll post evidence on the matter later but this isn't necessarily true. Bans on abortion do result in significant declines in abortion rates, even if there are going to be significant drawbacks (medical complications from back- alley abortions, police devoting resources to investigations, unwanted children growing up in poverty.) In Freakonomics the authors suggested an increase in abortion access was one of the causes of the decline in crime in the 1990s.

Likewise drug and alcohol consumption increases with legalization. At the same time the quality and safety improve as it goes from underground to regulated.

That is possible - however, can you rely on statistics when the activity is not performed openly? Like with drug abuse, how can you monitor behavior that is inherently hidden? By the number of arrests?

However, the central issue is that though I'm pro-choice, abortion rights are not necessarily the same as women's rights or civil rights. I'm not naive enough to believe that all or even most abortions are a matter of choice. A few years ago, there was a law in Texas, I believe, that required parental consent for minors to get an abortion. The irony was that they discovered the majority of teen abortions were instigated by the young woman's parents. She wasn't pursuing the abortion, they were making her get one.

Historically, even back to ancient times, abortion was not a sign of women's choices, but were imposed or enforced by their parents, husbands or even state agencies. Also, like your point about the 1990's Freakonomics article, obviously abortion affects poor communities far more. Around 40% of women in America are pro-life and just a year or so ago, the polls had over 50% of American women identifying as pro-life.

Both positions seem untenable in that pro-choice will ignore the number of cases where abortion is forced upon the woman either directly or through an absence of social support for a choice to have the child, and pro-life will then abandon the woman and child after the birth. Currently, though, in actual practice, it seems the pro-choice position is much more involved in supporting the women than the pro-life position is toward supporting the children.

[Johnathan]

The last "grand bargain" I remember like this was women's suffrage in return for prohibition. The latter so disastrous that it needed repeal. But at least that was giving a right in return for an ill-beotten idea.
To think that Republicans will ever do what is necessary to fight Climate Change in return for any of their horrible agenda is as ludicrous as the Munich Accords.

Even then, a strong argument for giving women the vote was the assumption they would simply vote the same way as their husbands. Along those same assumptions, some activists for African American rights argued that women should not have the vote since that simply meant doubling the number of white voters.

Personally, I'm much more concerned with increasing human rights and individual power than the climate change question. I don't really think we'll be in a position to successfully tackle anything like global warming until the world's women, disenfranchised and poor have the power to hold our governments accountable. The world's politicians and governmental institutions haven't been able to deal successfully with pollution, financial corruption, nuclear weapon proliferation, so how in the world can we expect this system to actually be able to handle something ten times more difficult than all those other problems combined?

[worstblogever]

The last "grand bargain" I remember like this was women's suffrage in return for prohibition. The latter so disastrous that it needed repeal. But at least that was giving a right in return for an ill-beotten idea.
To think that Republicans will ever do what is necessary to fight Climate Change in return for any of their horrible agenda is as ludicrous as the Munich Accords.

"We're saying that we'll let the planet die unless we can treat women as second class citizens again."

1. That's messed up.
2. Who the hell am I to decide it's okay to barter with women's bodily autonomy? Why do Republicans think it's okay to leave them out of this negotiation?

The entire thing gets more screwed up the more Mets' suggestion isn't laughed off this forum for being as insulting and stupid as it is.

Fight climate change. Or we're all f***ed.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day posted profiles of Larry Pittman, a member of the North Carolina House of Representatives, a pastor and a Birther who was first appointed to office in 2011, and has barely survived a few re-election scares because his great ideas for making our country better seem to fit the pattern of working towards a theocracy, naming Christianity our state religion, and eliminating all income taxes and using only sales tax to generate revenue for the government. Pittman also was a trendsetter in demonizing Planned Parenthood years prior to the Center for Medical Progress doing so, saying they were a “murder for hire” organization and 75% of their revenue was generated in making money off of abortions, and insists that in 1992, he and his friends found baby parts in a Planned Parenthood dumpster that were, we quote, “the consistency of hamburger”. He’s so pro-life, in fact, that he has called for a return to public hangings, and in the order of who went to the gallows, he listed “abortionists, rapists, and kidnappers”, remarkably forgetting that abortion is legal, and omitting murderers from his list. His other big wacky moment from our first profile was when he reacted to meager gun control suggestions by producing pro-gun legislation after the Sandy Hook massacre, and when asked to defend such an action from the press, warned against the government coming for or the United Nations coming for all our guns, and he also thinks Common Core Standards are “a Marxist attack to destroy us fom within”, in but two of his paranoid rants worthy of an episode of Alex Jones’ InfoWars. This should perhaps come as little surprise, but you may have heard about how the North Carolina GOP produced the anti-gay HB 2 Law that allowed for the legal discrimination of LGBTQ citizens in the state… well, it should come as little shock that Larry Pittman was a co-sponsor of the bill. Who would have guessed that a Fundamentalist theocratic lunatic also hates gay people, right?

So, how bugs*** crazy can Larry Pittman get? Well, back in April of 2017, he got on Facebook to talk about his insane effort to try to pass legislation to ignore the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling (good luck with that) and decided to wax poetic about the founder of the Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln. And, the Great Emancipator, it seems, in the eyes of Larry Pittman, is just like Hitler:

“And if Hitler had won, should the world just get over it? Lincoln was the same sort (of) tyrant, and personally responsible for the deaths of over 800,000 Americans in a war that was unnecessary and unconstitutional.”

Through 2018, Pittman remained bonkers. After the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, Pittman posted on Facebook that the entire shooting was staged, and part of a conspiracy created by “Communist Democrats” to “push for gun control so they can take over the country”. The outrage over his comment made Pittman pause from sponsoring a bill he had planned to try and arm teachers… until March of 2019, when Pittman filed legislation to allow teachers to carry guns in the classroom. Towards the end of that month, he voted against a bill to ban corporal punishment in schools, commenting that he is grateful for every “whipping my daddy gave me”.

In September of 2019, Pittman filed HB 65, also known as the “Marriage Reaffirmation Amendment Act”, which would supposedly ban marriage equality in North Carolina and order state officials to ignore the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling. (Pretty safe to say that’s some unconstitutional “state’s rights” lunacy). But, after a constituent wrote a letter to Pittman telling him that pandering to intolerant old people who think the Bible should be the law of the land, Pittman responded calmly and politely explaining his position. NAH, we’re just kidding, Pittman wrote back to his own constituent and told them that he wouldn’t “change with the times” and told them that “if you have a complaint about that, tell it to Satan when you see him.”

Larry Pittman twice made headlines in June of 2020, first by calling for the police to just gun down BlackLivesMatter protesters, calling the protesters, “vermin”, and falsely creating an anti-Semitic narrative that they were funded by George Soros:

”This is war. Our people have a right to expect our leaders to be on our side, not surrender to the lawless, godless mob. 'These vermin don't care about George Floyd or any other individual, except maybe their financial sponsor, George Soros. They are bent on destroying our country and our way of life, and they will use any tragedy, any slogan, any excuse to convince clueless people that their radical injustice is justice.Whatever stolen goods or money you recover from them will go to help the business owners whose places of business have been invaded … If they resist and attack you, shoot them.”

Just like Jesus would have said, right?

Only days later, he was on to spreading Covidiot propaganda, sharing an online conspiracy theory from Michael Speciale (who we are relieved is no longer in office). Pittman pushed the narrative that wearing masks during the pandemic was more of a health risk than going without them. And, in October of 2021, Pittman was still at it, sending out e-mails throughout the state legislature claiming that the Covid-19 VACCINE was killing people, but that it in the media, it is “being downplayed”, that masks can’t stop the virus from getting through, that air escapes around the mask, that the RNA in the vaccines causes recipients’ bodies to “create the ‘virus” and that it is not a vaccine after all. When the local media attempted to contact Pittman for comment after debunking his claims, he responded “I don’t do interviews”. Clearly, a very responsible approach that public health experts must love.

We reiterate, Pittman is insane. He survived a primary challenge in 2020 with 60% of the vote, and narrowly won re-election with 51% of the vote in the general against his Democratic challenger, Gail Young (hanging on by less than 1400 votes). He thus will continue raving about conspiracy theories for at least another two years and being one of the worst legislators in the United States.

[Gray Lensman]

The last "grand bargain" I remember like this was women's suffrage in return for prohibition. The latter so disastrous that it needed repeal. But at least that was giving a right in return for an ill-beotten idea.
To think that Republicans will ever do what is necessary to fight Climate Change in return for any of their horrible agenda is as ludicrous as the Munich Accords.

I remember a different Grand Bargain from my history books. The one that ended Reconstruction. That one didn't work out very well, either.

[Kirby101]

How about Universal Healthcare if we end all restrictions on firearms everywhere. At least then all the extra injuries can be treated.
What would the Republicans give us if we took away the vote from black people?
There are so many great bargains.

[Tami]

Oklahoma bill gives parents the right to have a book removed from a school library

Under Senate Bill 1142, if just one parent objects to a book it must be removed within 30 days. If it is not, the librarian must be fired and cannot work for any public school for two years. Parents can also collect at least $10,000 per day from school districts if the book is not removed as requested.

As a librarian, this scares the heck out of me. Just grateful i live in the sane state of NJ, not Oklahoma.

[AnakinFlair]

I remember a different Grand Bargain from my history books. The one that ended Reconstruction. That one didn't work out very well, either.

Worked out pretty well for the South, actually.