General US Politics

[Zapp Branniglenn]

So when can we start impeachment proceedings on our Supreme Court justices who lied under oath? Yes I'm aware we don't have the votes to actually remove them but jesus, make some kind of statement about how this isn't okay. If that's not an impeachable offense than what is? If it were any lower court that Judge would be thrown out.

If Biden wins re-election in 2024, but republicans take back the House, then you know the next impeachment is going to be about Hunter Biden's mythical laptop, gas prices back in 2022, or some other Fox News talking point of the week. 

1 hour ago, Armchair General said:

To be fair, an minority of those leaders were actually elected.

To be especially fair. Neither was Trump. At least not by the American public. Hillary got more votes. The electoral college chooses the president. Heck in the year 2000 the Supreme Court chose the president, and who knows how many votes will be thrown out by corrupt politicians and judges in 2024? And even ignoring those democratic crises, with the current rules the voting power state to state is disproportionate. My vote will never be equal to those of any other state, despite my state feeding and financing the continued existence of middle America. I'm tired of being rule by land instead of people.

Edited June 29, 2022 by Zapp Branniglenn

[Armchair General]

3 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

So when can we start impeachment proceedings on our Supreme Court justices who lied under oath?

I doubt of that'll happen anytime soon.

[Shoblongoo]

17 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

So when can we start impeachment proceedings on our Supreme Court justices who lied under oath? 

When the progressive left AoC/Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party has enough Senate and House seats to outvote the entire Republican Party and Pelosi/Schumer liberal establishment combined. 

(i.e. it'll probably be quicker to just wait for said justices to die of natural causes) 

Edited June 29, 2022 by Shoblongoo

[eclipse]

I'm locking this while I figure out what the hell just happened.

EDIT: Some posts went poof.  I did that.  This is a reminder to stay civil.  Roe v. Wade is extremely emotional.  Grossly misrepresenting the other side is not conducive to being civil.  So no remarks about "pro-forced birth", no matter how accurate you think it is.  Or accusing the other side of killing babies.  Neither of these accurately represents the view from the other side.  Mod's gotta mod.

Edited June 29, 2022 by eclipse

[Armchair General]

1 hour ago, eclipse said:

I'm locking this while I figure out what the hell just happened.

EDIT: Some posts went poof.  I did that.  This is a reminder to stay civil.  Roe v. Wade is extremely emotional.  Grossly misrepresenting the other side is not conducive to being civil.  So no remarks about "pro-forced birth", no matter how accurate you think it is.  Or accusing the other side of killing babies.  Neither of these accurately represents the view from the other side.  Mod's gotta mod.

Why not just ban abortion as an topic? This is like the second time this month it happened.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

42 minutes ago, Armchair General said:

Why not just ban abortion as an topic? This is like the second time this month it happened.

Bad takes on these issues can only fester in a bubble where everybody parrots the same talking points. I'm not about to say I handled that situation well but banning serious discussions in Serious Discussion sounds like a whole lot less bubble popping. Besides how do you enforce a ban like that - other than coming in after the fact to delete more posts? Nothing changes. 

[Armchair General]

1 hour ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Bad takes on these issues can only fester in a bubble where everybody parrots the same talking points. I'm not about to say I handled that situation well but banning serious discussions in Serious Discussion sounds like a whole lot less bubble popping. Besides how do you enforce a ban like that - other than coming in after the fact to delete more posts? Nothing changes. 

I don't know man, if it repeatedly gets to the point where either side refuses to back down, we all know what happens, afterwards.

[Excellen Browning]

Surely if we just don't talk about it we'll all just get along.

I'd insert that ben garrison "world where we don't talk about slavery vs world where we do" cartoon here but I can't find it

Edited June 30, 2022 by Excellen Browning

[AnonymousSpeed]

18 hours ago, eclipse said:

Mod's gotta mod.

Very well. Your house, your rules. My apologies for my brutish behavior.

2 hours ago, Excellen Browning said:

I'd insert that ben garrison "world where we don't talk about slavery vs world where we do" cartoon here but I can't find it

Let me know if you find it, that guy's comics are hilarious.

[Lord Raven]

Someone actually said this overturning was good? lol

I'm sorry but this supreme court is full of political hacks.

And this is the most frightening one.

https://mobile.twitter.com/MikeSacksEsq/status/1542522085993357320?t=l9e1ArA14LVjbHzxiGWU4w&s=19

They want to rule on being able to throw your fucking vote away in presidential elections.

If Republicans gain power, we'll have a nationwide abortion ban with a broken filibuster. Then we'll probably reach a level of tension where either the federal government loses all authority and states operate completely on their own, or a lot of local conflicts breaking out. In the meantime, the rich will get richer, and a lot of women will be jailed indefinitely for essentially having the gall to be raped and try to fix their trauma. In fact, their rapists will have lighter sentences than them.

Look, I don't give a flying fuck your opinion on where life begins. Everyone universally agrees it's after birth, it's a lot iffier when you get into each stage of pregnancy. 90% of abortions happen in the first trimester, which is something we're all willing to compromise on and what is most universally agreed upon. And in the case of rape (incest too, but this is under rape to me), unviable fetuses, threats to the mother etc you should 100% be allowed to do whatever you want with the fetus.

But striking down this law lead to trigger laws that ban abortion absolutely and allow bounties on women. There's even this bullshit where they're definitely doing this to prevent abortions on native land, by removing Native American autonomy to enforce their own laws. And don't forget about these same cunts wanting to prosecute for interstate travel as if it's any of their fucking business why people leave the state.

Ultimately, all these rulings do is outlaw safe abortions, and place a lot of women in danger where a) pre-marital sex is explicitly forbidden (so they will take matters into their own hands), b) in a cycle of poverty with a child that was essentially forced on them vs death, or c) in a spot where they have to choose *how* they will die, rather than when. Frankly, allowing people to have kids who don't actually want kids (or are waiting), is bad for the parent and the kid, and is a net negative for society. I would be inclined to take this in a lot better faith if these red states weren't also trying to crack down on contraceptives, too.

So even if technically the legislature should be creating a law for this, the legislature will not and has not because the precedent of Roe v Wade was respected. But now there's two Benedict Arnolds and several missteps from the Biden administration. I don't even know what the executive can do, because the rulings today also prevented the EPA from being able to enforce federal regulations. Their goal right now is to turn everything into "states rights" and then win the federal government, and either completely neuter it and turn half the nation into a theocracy, or turn the entire nation into a theocracy to stick it to people like me.

Fuck the Republican Party. They infested the court with Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, anti-RBG (I refuse to remember her name right now), and Kavanaugh who are total immoral hacks. The rulings were made on heinous, bad faith grounds. I know for a fact that I will not be abiding by these stupid ass, mean spirited red state laws made by flaccid assholes, and opening my house to anyone who wants to go camping.

 

And this is before we get into the fact that Clarence Thomas' wife is a fucking seditionist.

[Armchair General]

48 minutes ago, Lord Raven said:

I'm sorry but this supreme court is full of political hacks

What happened to just handing out subpoenas to the vaccine manufacturers to ask how it's really made?

 

As for the abortion ruling, it's too early to tell exactly how far each state will run with it. Granted, we're at the mercy of the people upstairs; but there has to be quite an few people amongst them who are willing to put the public before anything else. I mean, they all can't be this selfish?

 

 

[Lord Raven]

33 minutes ago, Armchair General said:

What happened to just handing out subpoenas to the vaccine manufacturers to ask how it's really made?

They aren't made with fetuses. They're tested on human fetuses that were voluntarily given to them. I think the lack of knowledge doesn't make it any bit sound or correct to imply that baby fetuses were key in making them.

 

33 minutes ago, Armchair General said:

As for the abortion ruling, it's too early to tell exactly how far each state will run with it. Granted, we're at the mercy of the people upstairs; but there has to be quite an few people amongst them who are willing to put the public before anything else. I mean, they all can't be this selfish?

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/27/politics/states-abortion-trigger-laws-roe-v-wade-supreme-court/index.html

I described the direction many of them are running. South Dakota is doing a full ban, even if the life of the mother is at risk, even in the case of rape.

So yes, states have already shown how far they're willing to run -- Texas is literally allowing bounties to people they suspect might be getting an abortion out of state. And these legislators are literally trying to regulate interstate traffic because of abortion.

What the hell are you talking about? They've already taken it far.

Edited July 1, 2022 by Lord Raven

[Armchair General]

1 hour ago, Lord Raven said:

They aren't made with fetuses. They're tested on human fetuses that were voluntarily given to them. I think the lack of knowledge doesn't make it any bit sound or correct to imply that baby fetuses were key in making them.

I know that at least one of the vaccines was tested on an fetus; it's just that it shouldn't be that hard to look into how it's developed, especially if you're posting on Twitter.

 

1 hour ago, Lord Raven said:

What the hell are you talking about? They've already taken it far.

I was thinking about somewhere along the lines of making it harder to put the kids in foster care in addition to trying to prosecute people who are traveling out of state.

Granted, it might not happen this year; but you never know, nowadays

Edited July 1, 2022 by Armchair General

[Clear World]

@Armchair GeneralI'm just going to post this here.

The anti-abortion group National Right to Life (NRLC) has released a model bill (pdf) meant to be used by state legislatures to restrict abortion in nearly all instances in the new post-Roe America.

“We recommend prohibiting abortion except to prevent the death of the pregnant woman,” the NRLC document begins. If someone otherwise causes an abortion, the model law would charge them with a Level 2 felony. Language like this would cover doctors who perform an abortion, unlicensed “black market” abortion providers, and anyone who provides an abortion pill to a pregnant woman.

Aiding or abetting an illegal abortion should include, but not be limited to: (1) giving instructions over the telephone, the internet, or any other medium of communication regarding self-administered abortions or means to obtain an illegal abortion; (3) hosting or maintaining a website, or providing internet service, that encourages or facilitates efforts to obtain an illegal abortion; (4) offering or providing illegal “abortion doula” services; and (5) providing referrals to an illegal abortion provider.

The NRLC goes further, recommending that anyone who “aids or abets an illegal abortion” be subject to the same criminal penalties.

Note: Anyone who hosts a website with, for example, reporting on the availability of abortion pills would be subject to criminal and civil penalties for “aiding or abetting” an abortion. This legislation would attack the entire informational infrastructure around abortion. Like with the “Don’t Say Gay” and anti-CRT bills, the vagueness in the language is intentional.

--------

Also, abortion bounties.

Another conservative activist group, the Thomas More Society, is drafting model legislation based on already  existing Texas’ bounty law that would target those who help an individual cross state lines to obtain an abortion. (The Washington Post)

The National Association of Christian Lawmakers, led by Republican state legislators, is also reportedly working on a similar bill by collaborating with the authors of the Texas abortion ban. Arkansas state Sen. Jason Rapert (R), president of the group, said—without evidence—that without bounties on crossing state lines for abortions, people were going to be “trafficking women in order to make money off of aborting their babies.”

Edited July 1, 2022 by Clear World

[Lord Raven]

Yeah these are actually a fucking crisis. Texas already can't handle a power grid and it won't be able to handle the influx in children they're about to have to deal with.

 

And that's Texas. Imagine being in Alabama right now.

Edited July 1, 2022 by Lord Raven

[Tryhard]

11 hours ago, Armchair General said:

As for the abortion ruling, it's too early to tell exactly how far each state will run with it.

The invocation of "states rights" has always been used by conservatives to justify a certain type of behaviour. It is the last gasp of conservatism trying to desperately cling on to old outdated ideas as they realise they have become politically unfeasible when they are federally settled. Most notably with racial segregation laws, the same states rights arguments came up.

Edited July 1, 2022 by Tryhard

[AnonymousSpeed]

3 hours ago, Tryhard said:

The invocation of "states rights" has always been used by conservatives to justify a certain type of behaviour. It is the last gasp of conservatism trying to desperately cling on to old outdated ideas as they realise they have become politically unfeasible when they are federally settled. Most notably with racial segregation laws, the same states rights arguments came up.

Massachusetts legalized gay marriage in 2004 as a states right.

15 hours ago, Lord Raven said:

Look, I don't give a flying fuck your opinion on where life begins. Everyone universally agrees it's after birth,

But that's obviously and demonstrably wrong. There are large numbers of people who disagree with that statement, and to be entirely honest I'm aware of no compelling justification for saying life begins after birth.

[X-Naut]

15 hours ago, Lord Raven said:

They want to rule on being able to throw your fucking vote away in presidential elections.

Yeah speaking of which:

SC Republican Party overrules Greenville County GOP, confirms Russo as primary winner (yahoo.com)

Saw this earlier and it looks like a small-scale practice run.

[Lord Raven]

1 minute ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

But that's obviously and demonstrably wrong. There are large numbers of people who disagree with that statement, and to be entirely honest I'm aware of no compelling justification for saying life begins after birth.

You misunderstood. And frankly you're cherry picking and didn't acknowledge any other point I made.

I'll clarify but choose another hill to die on.

Im saying the point after birth, everyone agrees life is happening there. I'm also saying that the disagreements happen during the pregnancy. At which point during the pregnancy do we consider the fetus "life"? A bunch say conception, a bunch think it's completely irrelevant, a bunch think heartbeat. I, personally, don't care or think it is relevant.

I'm also saying it's hypocritical to argue this while giving zero support to new parents (like how they voted against baby formula in lockstep) and only one Republican seems to have stood up for universal childcare, and even then Joe Manchin didn't want to renew it. Contraceptive access and sex ed also reduce the number of abortions by a good amount, yet Republican state legislatures and federal politicians want to ban or neuter these things. There is nothing about the pro-life stance as preached by the Republican party makes sense. I hate to say they are "pro-birth" after eclipse specifically warned us not to, but quite frankly I'm not actually sure what their position is because pro-life is not accurate.

The real reason is because white birth is decreasing and the future of America is Latino. This scares evangelical America. But I'm sure you know this.

[AnonymousSpeed]

3 minutes ago, Lord Raven said:

You misunderstood. And frankly you're cherry picking and didn't acknowledge any other point I made.

I'll clarify but choose another hill to die on.

Im saying the point after birth, everyone agrees life is happening there.

I cared mostly about that point.

I'll just not die, thanks.

I agree with that, but that's not the logical value of the statement you said. You said life begins "after birth", which means the week before birth doesn't count as life. I'd recommend editing your post to reflect your intended meaning.

5 minutes ago, Lord Raven said:

I, personally, don't care or think it is relevant.

It is literally the core of the issue.

5 minutes ago, Lord Raven said:

Contraceptive access and sex ed also reduce the number of abortions by a good amount

Thomas Sowell has written at length about how this is wrong. More sex-ed was followed by rising rates of teenage pregnancy, abortions, and venereal disease, even though those things had been declining before.

7 minutes ago, Lord Raven said:

I'm also saying it's hypocritical to argue this while giving zero support to new parents (like how they voted against baby formula in lockstep)

I don't think you have to give money to someone to acknowledge they're a human and their life deserves protection, but the baby formula would have been nice, yes. Did they ever get around to allowing those European imports?

9 minutes ago, Lord Raven said:

The real reason is because white birth is decreasing and the future of America is Latino. This scares evangelical America. But I'm sure you know this.

This is literally the great replacement conspiracy theory.

[Tryhard]

1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Massachusetts legalized gay marriage in 2004 as a states right.

Liberals never make a big deal about state legislation in the same way Republicans do. It's a common talking point for them. Just because some liberal state law gets passed doesn't invalidate that states rights arguments have primarily been used historically to justify backwards views lol.

A lot of the problems in America stem from the fact that states can vary wildly in their laws, over federal laws.

52 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

It is literally the core of the issue.

It's more that it is an impasse.

Because it becomes a philosophical or moral question.

There is simply no argument that can conclusively be brought to prove to someone who morally thinks that abortion is murder that life does not begin until X week.

52 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I don't think you have to give money to someone to acknowledge they're a human and their life deserves protection, but the baby formula would have been nice, yes. Did they ever get around to allowing those European imports?

It's mostly because the US is notorious for any kind of child support spending compared to any similar country. 

Perhaps pro-life positions would carry more weight if the people that hold them actually want to improve the lives of struggling parents.

Like in Poland, abortion is banned, which is unusual for a European country, but at least they actually have some childcare support programmes (they aren't in above graph but they recently had a new childcare programme where they would pay families for having children)

Poland are governed by a right-wing populist party but at least I can see the consistency with them wanting to provide for people who do go through with having children.

52 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

This is literally the great replacement conspiracy theory.

Yes, and the far-right believe it to be true because external malicious forces are making the white birth rate go down while other races are "planted" in the US.

It is true that the race demographics are shifting in America, but it's not for the nefarious reasons the far-right think it is. Nor does it really matter.

Edited July 1, 2022 by Tryhard

[Armchair General]

12 hours ago, Clear World said:

@Armchair GeneralI'm just going to post this here.

The anti-abortion group National Right to Life (NRLC) has released a model bill (pdf) meant to be used by state legislatures to restrict abortion in nearly all instances in the new post-Roe America.

“We recommend prohibiting abortion except to prevent the death of the pregnant woman,” the NRLC document begins. If someone otherwise causes an abortion, the model law would charge them with a Level 2 felony. Language like this would cover doctors who perform an abortion, unlicensed “black market” abortion providers, and anyone who provides an abortion pill to a pregnant woman.

Aiding or abetting an illegal abortion should include, but not be limited to: (1) giving instructions over the telephone, the internet, or any other medium of communication regarding self-administered abortions or means to obtain an illegal abortion; (3) hosting or maintaining a website, or providing internet service, that encourages or facilitates efforts to obtain an illegal abortion; (4) offering or providing illegal “abortion doula” services; and (5) providing referrals to an illegal abortion provider.

The NRLC goes further, recommending that anyone who “aids or abets an illegal abortion” be subject to the same criminal penalties.

Note: Anyone who hosts a website with, for example, reporting on the availability of abortion pills would be subject to criminal and civil penalties for “aiding or abetting” an abortion. This legislation would attack the entire informational infrastructure around abortion. Like with the “Don’t Say Gay” and anti-CRT bills, the vagueness in the language is intentional.

--------

Also, abortion bounties.

Another conservative activist group, the Thomas More Society, is drafting model legislation based on already  existing Texas’ bounty law that would target those who help an individual cross state lines to obtain an abortion. (The Washington Post)

The National Association of Christian Lawmakers, led by Republican state legislators, is also reportedly working on a similar bill by collaborating with the authors of the Texas abortion ban. Arkansas state Sen. Jason Rapert (R), president of the group, said—without evidence—that without bounties on crossing state lines for abortions, people were going to be “trafficking women in order to make money off of aborting their babies.”

Yeah, this is pretty fucked up; but it's kind of insane  that they think people would willingly play along with this for the foreseeable future.

 

36 minutes ago, Lord Raven said:

The real reason is because white birth is decreasing and the future of America is Latino. This scares evangelical America. But I'm sure you know this

I'm pretty sure that this goes beyond racial issues. Paranoia about immigration has been going on for decades, but this was mostly over job availability.

[Lord Raven]

1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I'll just not die, thanks.

You didn't. Congrats. I'm sure you can get over it since you didn't.

 

1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I agree with that, but that's not the logical value of the statement you said. You said life begins "after birth", which means the week before birth doesn't count as life. I'd recommend editing your post to reflect your intended meaning.

No, I said that's the point where everyone agrees life begins. I never even said that's definitively where life begins. I was talking solely to consensus. I clarified my intended meaning later, so I won't edit anything.

1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

It is literally the core of the issue.

No, it's not.

1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Thomas Sowell has written at length about how this is wrong. More sex-ed was followed by rising rates of teenage pregnancy, abortions, and venereal disease, even though those things had been declining before.

Is Thomas Sowell a statistic?

No, instead he sounds like a fucking idiot.

1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I don't think you have to give money to someone to acknowledge they're a human and their life deserves protection, but the baby formula would have been nice, yes. Did they ever get around to allowing those European imports?

I never mentioned money. I mentioned support services. Other countries have these; if we had them, maybe white people would want to immigrate to the US, too.

If they did want to support life, they'd allow parents much longer paternity/maternity leave and actual affordable childcare. As it stands, 44% of people in the US do not plan to have kids, and a good chunk of that populations gripes are that they simply can't afford it. So in the end, if you want more pregnancy and birth, you do have to throw money at it. Correct.

1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

This is literally the great replacement conspiracy theory.

It sounds like you care about it. But no. There would be no demographic shifts if our social services and quality of living were on par with Europe. If we stopped allowing this unfettered crony corporatism to infect our capitalist economics, and actually allowed safety nets. Instead we get immigrants from countries that America has a better QOL than -- countries that your boy Trump called "shithole countries" and surprise surprise, they're predominantly not white.

You want to curb replacement theory? Start advocating for better quality of living, social services, etc. Make us fucking competitive with white countries. Stop virtue signaling about where life begins and about premarital sex. This great replacement isn't happening due to some nefarious plot by (((them))) trying to cause white genocide. It's that right wing media has taught people that the solution to your problems is to fuck up your society and find people to look down on. (See: the most recent virulently bigoted transphobic rhetoric among suburbanites) This is making our politics too toxic and ineffective for anyone to want to move here.

Maybe come up with some kind of New Deal. Or don't, because I don't think it's a big deal that America is becoming less white. Maybe give white america an incentive to have kids instead of making them one medical emergency away from debt spiraling. Maybe having a kid shouldn't cost you like 300k over the first two years of its life.

 

1 hour ago, Armchair General said:

I'm pretty sure that this goes beyond racial issues. Paranoia about immigration has been going on for decades, but this was mostly over job availability.

I made it a point to emphasize evangelical America, and not conservative America, in general. That is definitely a concern, mixed with entitled Americans who have refused to acknowledge the end of the 80s for like 35 years.

I believe the pro-forced birth framing should not be banned for the reasons I have explicitly laid out, but I believe that our policy incongruence with, say, Poland (thanks for the assist Tryhard) means that we have no moral grounds to take a pro-life stance in this country.

 

Having all that said, for the same reasons as Tryhard, I feel Mitt Romney has a respectable position on this (he introduced the childcare credits, after all). But I think pro-choice is the option that covers the moral ambiguity of this issue, because the moral aspects of it are so ambiguous and frankly unfalsifiable that we really waste a lot of time discussing it. That's why it's an effective culture war tactic, because the pro-life legislation in red states will actually completely weaken their economy.

 

It's also a fucked up look when SCOTUS expanded gun rights (something we don't need) but reduced abortion rights while stating it's coming for sodomy, gay marriage, etc next. A Republican senator even said interracial marriage should be left to the states, and mysteriously Clarence Thomas didn't mention the potential overturn of interracial marriage. Could it be because his wife is a seditionist?

 

Edited July 1, 2022 by Lord Raven

[Armchair General]

1 hour ago, Lord Raven said:

There would be no demographic shifts if our social services and quality of living were on par with Europe.

I'm not exactly sure if this is an fair comparison, considering how European governments have an different set problems and policies to deal with this.

 

 

[Lord Raven]

Just now, Armchair General said:

I'm not exactly sure if this is an fair comparison, considering how European governments have an different set problems and policies to deal with this.

Yes, because they've invested in their infrastructure far far more than we have. But we can't even get that.