#or much much less time than that if they're voting just for the president
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I don’t know if this is what you are looking for exactly, but I enjoy writing for Postcards to Voters because they focus on non-presidential races. I am currently writing postcards against an anti-choice constitutional amendment proposition in Ohio.
I wish more people would do things like that, instead of making posts that guilt trip people for not being excited enough about voting for the Blue sexual harasser instead of the Red one.
Thank you for your highly sensible response.
I guess there's a thing where "just because someone takes 15 seconds to shoot their mouth off online about something that's annoying them doesn't mean they have the time/energy to do anything actually constructive, even more so for the people who took .5 seconds to hit reblog now on someone else's shooting their mouth of post" but I think it would be strictly better for people to spend that .5 second exerting a smidgen of self control and going "either it's actual GOTV or it's not, and if it's not I'm going to not reblog it."
And as the election is over a year away...I don't think "vote blue no matter who" is actually a Get Out The Vote action at this point in time. It's annoying enough when people do it in person but at least then there's occasionally some chance of having a reasonable discussion about it, but on social media between people who don't really know each other? Ha snowball's chance in hell.
(I haven't done Postcards to Voters the last couple years, but I did around 2019-2020 or so and they are fairly low barrier to entry as long as you have stamp money, super introvert friendly, you can be as creative or non-creative as you want to be, and as you can do it from your home on your own schedule pretty darn spoonie friendly as well. As well as covid-safe. And yes, there's a big focus on local/state campaigns, which warms my participatory democracy loving little heart.) (ughh sounds like an important campaign maybe I should pick this thing up again.)
#I did big posts arguing about this in 2000 but I felt crummy afterwards so I'd really rather not rehash all that#it's theoretically and pragmatically wrong on multiple levels#this is the internet you don't get unity#you get two splinter groups arguing the two most extreme ends of the position possible each side convinced that they are 100% right#someone who's a little bit in favor of voting blue no matter who will get downright dogmatic about it#someone who's a little bit against will end up surrounded by anarchists who think voting is a waste of time#which wouldn't be the worst outcome ever#except that as far as I can tell most of the most vocal anarchists on tumblr don't do shit except tear down democratic politicians#like ok glad you think you're right I don't want to have anything to do with you though#there's like 2-3 anarchist posters on here who actually talk about direct action and organizing and stuff -- about things people can do#I guess with the abundance of time freed up by not spending a couple hours doing research and half an hour filling out a ballot#or much much less time than that if they're voting just for the president#yup congrats you sure saved a lot of time there now you have more time to convince other people to not vote either AWESOME GOOD JOB (sarcas#on an unrelated note I really need to work on a following the local news habit#and finding some way to learn more about oakland's history since I live here now#and I know how annoying it can be when someone's trying to be active in local politics but is missing highly important context
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Michigan just gave us the rhetorical weapon that could push Biden and the DNC to turn their backs on Israel.
Okay so this is amazing news. Michigan was going to be a key state in the push to get Biden, and the DNC as a whole, to start pressuring Israel, and they have just proven that they have that power.
Background: Michigan is a swing state, and it has 16 votes in the electoral college. Winning Michigan was a major factor in Biden's win back in 2020, and much of that rested on the Arab-American vote. It was also a major factor in Hillary Clinton's loss to Donald Trump in 2016. She lost the state by ten thousand, seven hundred votes.
Praxis: For obvious reasons, Arab-Americans are incredibly upset with Biden's support for Israel, and support in that demographic has gone from 59% in the 2020 election to less than 17% now. As a form of protest, Arab-Americans in Michigan started a campaign to get voters to check "uncommitted" in the Democratic primary. This is an actual box that can be checked, though some less-organized pushes also suggested writing in 'ceasefire' like New Hampshire primary voters did.
The goal was to get at least 10,000 'uncommitted' votes, as that is how many Hillary lost by.
As Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, the first Arab mayor of this majority-Arab city, said:
"We're not sizable enough to make a candidate win, but we're sizable enough to make a candidate lose."
(Source: NPR, 2/25/24)
Result:
As of 10:49 PM EST, 2/27, there are thirty-nine thousand uncommitted votes, according to CNN, which is doing live coverage.
NPR was reporting 30k at 10:14.
As a caveat, New York Times is saying that each of the last three Michigan Dem Primaries had about 20k uncommitted votes, so the 35k isn't all the push for pro-Palestine stances in Congress, but that's still a jump of almost 20k, which is way, way more than the goal.
And they aren't done counting the votes yet. Barely 30% of votes are in. The goal has been blown out of the water.
Other states are reaching out for advice on how to replicate the results.
This is big news.
So can we relax?
Fuck no.
Do what Michigan did. Vote in the Dem primary, and vote uncommitted or write in "ceasefire."
But on a more daily basis, if you have a Democratic candidate, lean on this.
Tell them it will be repeated elsewhere.
This could very well lose the election for Biden and more. The Democrats can't afford another four years of Trump, and they know it. The loss of Michigan can and will tank this election for them, especially since other states that helped Biden win, like Georgia, were also won on demographics that are growing increasingly upset by the situation in Gaza.
Go to the Michigan section of this post and use that in your calls and emails.
But remember. Call your reps. Call your senators. Call your governor, if you'd like. And if they're a Democrat, you bring this up. Be polite, the staffer isn't making these decisions. They might just be an intern. But bring it up and tell them that we are going to lose the presidency if we do not sanction Israel and actually pressure them into not only pulling out of Gaza and the West Bank, but paying reparations.
#michigan#united states#michigan primary#primary voting#democratic primary#current events#phoenix politics#voting#praxis#politics#pro palestine#gaza#palestine#israel#2024 election
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Hi! I saw your post on telling Americans to vote, and I was wondering what you think of posts from people from other parts of the world who are calling Americans evil for voting for Biden because of his support for Israel. I've seen a few already. They seem to be completely convinced that Americans deliberately voted for Biden specifically to side against Palestine and no other reason, and spread the general (pretty ignorant and hateful) message of "Americans are evil because of the actions of their government and because they collectively refuse to vote for a president who is good and not simply 'the lesser of two evils'".
It frustrates me because they seem to think they're experts on US politics, culture, and society and have all the answers, but it also makes me concerned because it reminds me of the whole Russian bot thing from last time. Like, I'm 99% sure the people reblogging these posts aren't Russian bots (don't know about the OPs though), and they unquestioningly believe this.
What do you think of this and how would you go about addressing this issue? Do you think it's possible to get them to understand how little they actually know about the US and how they're actually promoting a message that makes things worse for everyone? I've also seen less scathing posts that are just disheartened and don't seem to believe the democrats are truly better to vote for than the republicans and so it's just two sides of the same coin. To be fair, I think that sort of feeling is only further encouraged because there didn't really seem to be much if any progress made with Biden, not even back to square one after Trump moved the country so far backwards. I think most Americans really wish the elections actually had good candidates and they could pick the best of two goods, but are frustrated and stuck with the current system and don't know how to actually get to the point where there are good candidates. (Though personally I think voting for the one who isn't actively trying to make themselves a king with unlimited terms is a decent start. I can understand the frustration though.)
Hi! Thanks for the ask. This stuff worries me too. I've gotten comments on my posts like that too, telling me/other Americans that we're evil for voting for Biden.
But I've seen a much larger number of comments and posts from people outside the United States BEGGING us to vote for Biden. I literally get tags like that on my posts EVERY DAY urging Americans to vote blue. So I think that's valuable context, even if it doesn't solve the problem of the "I hate everybody who votes for Biden" crowd.
And yes, it's definitely a shitty argument on their part to claim that people voting for Biden are specifically siding against Palestine. Literally every single person I know in real life and online who plans to vote for Biden has been criticizing and protesting his policies on Palestine.
In terms of convincing the anti-voters that they're wrong, honestly, I don't know. They don't listen to reason and they seem intent on spreading despair. Some of Biden's policies have been terrible (Willow oil-drilling project), some of them have been downright evil (military aid to Israel), but I'm a rational person and I know that Trump is worse in every respect.
I've tried debating them. It's been pointless every time. They genuinely don't know how the government works, which scares me. Common takes include: 1) a genuine lack of awareness of how pro-Israel Trump and the right wing are, combined with magical thinking that a virtually unknown third party candidate can win the presidential election, 2) truly impressive mental gymnastics blaming Biden for the overturn of Roe v. Wade, and 3) continuing the mental gymnastics to blame Biden and the Democrats for anti-trans policies...
I guess my advice is to either ignore them and move on, or debunk things when you have time/energy? It's easier said than done, I know. There's nothing more annoying than someone being stupid on the internet, especially when they accuse you of stuff that just isn't true, and especially when they're spreading dangerous misinformation or voter-suppression rhetoric.
Like you, I'm highly suspicious of anyone who advocates AGAINST voting, or against voting blue. And I agree, many of these people are not bots, like you said, but I call them useful idiots, because they're doing the bots' work for them.
The one thing you said that I'm going to push back on is "there didn't really seem to be much if any progress made with Biden." Biden's actually made lots of progress on a variety of issues, and reversed some of Trump’s damage, it just doesn't get a lot of fanfare and it’s unfortunately happening at the same time as Republican gains in state legislatures and while they control the Supreme Court. But Biden and his administration have:
• invested billions in green architecture and clean energy, including making sure federal investments benefit low-income communities
• introduced new fines for companies' methane emissions
• introduced a plan to cut the federal government's greenhouse gas emissions by 65% by 2030 (that includes the military, which is a huge emitter)
• passed a huge bill for improving the country's infrastructure, including bridges, roads, broadband and more
• introduced first-ever national strategy on gender equality and equity and pushed Congress to pass the Equal Rights Amendment
• fought for women's reproductive rights after the overturn of Roe v. Wade
• put more women, people of color, and women of color on the federal bench than any of his predecessors combined
• nominated Kentaji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court
• boosted funding to historically Black colleges
• ordered the DOJ to end the use of private prisons by the federal government
• pardoned thousands of people convicted on federal marijuana charges
• created a White House office of gun violence prevention
• passed the Respect for Marriage Act, guaranteeing federal rights and benefits for same-sex couples
• rolled out a series of actions to protect the rights and safety of the LGBTQ+ community, including protecting queer and trans foster youth, improving access to mental health services, and addressing the rise in hate crimes
• challenged discriminatory state bans against gender-affirming care and trans athletes
• called to support trans youth in State of the Union address and restored the White House tradition of recognizing Pride Month
• changed passport rules so that people can obtain a passport with no gender marker
• examined efforts by each federal agency to advance LGBTQ+ rights around the world
• reversed Trump's transgender military ban
• protected the rights of incarcerated trans people
• forgave billions in student debt, repeatedly, and introduced penalties for college programs that trap students in debt
• slashed bank overdraft fees
• expanded guaranteed overtime pay for millions of people
• made union-busting harder
• prevented discriminatory mortgage lending
• made efforts to expand the child tax credit, which could lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty
• cracked down on agriculture monopolies to support farmers and small businesses
• made it so the government is going to start taking drug companies' patents away if they don't make affordable drugs
• made over-the-counter birth control pills available for the first time
• lowered the cost of hearing aids and expanded access to them
• spent millions of dollars on students' mental health
• reversed discriminatory healthcare rules
• reinvigorated cancer research
• announced plans to replace all leaded pipes in the next ten years as well as combatting lead exposure abroad
• changed rules for how people can get aid after disasters so they can get more protection and immediate payments more easily
• introduced new data privacy rules protecting people from tech companies
• pushed the federal government to monitor AI risks
• maintained steadfast support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression
• maintained steadfast support for Taiwan in the face of Chinese intimidation
• strengthened ties with allies in Asia and the Pacific Islands
• pledged climate change assistance to low-lying Pacific Island countries
• literally IMMEDIATELY after being elected, Biden fortified DACA, rejoined the Paris Agreement, and ended Trump's discriminatory "Muslim ban", ended the Keystone XL Pipeline and fossil duel development in wildlife monuments, (same as last link) rejoined the WHO, strengthened COVID-19 response measures on a variety of fronts, re-included non-citizens in the U.S. census, and passed executives orders on racial equity in the federal government
And I'm sure there's more I left out.
There are also things Biden does that literally don’t make the news, but matter a lot, like funding the Postal Service, and continuing to have a State Department so we can conduct overseas diplomacy (Trump tried to defund the USPS and wants to purge the State Department and fill it with loyalists).
#asks#US politics#Biden administration#I'm planning to make an even more comprehensive post at some point#my post
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When most people talk about expanding the Supreme Court, they're talking about adding a few Justices, two or four to the bench. But I am not most people. I do not think we should add a few Justices to get into an endless tit for tat with Mitch McConnell and his Federalist Society forces. I think we should blow the lid clear off this incrementally institutionalized motherfucker, and add 20 Justices.
I'd like to tell you about my Court expansion plan and explain why adding many Justices instead of fewer Justices is actually a better reform, fixes more underlying problems with the Court, and works out to be less partisan or political than some of the more incremental plans out there.
Let's start with the basics.
Expanding the number of Justices on the Supreme Court can be done with a simple act of Congress, passed by the Senate and signed by the President. Court expansion does not become easier or harder based on the number of Justices you seek to add to the Court. From a civics perspective, the process to add two Justices to the Court is just the same as the process to add 20.
Arguably, the rationale is the same too.
The current plan, supported by some Democrats, is to add four Justices to the Supreme Court. Their arguments are that the Court has gotten woefully out of step with the American people and the elected branches of government, which is true.
They argue that the country is a lot bigger now than it was in 1869, when Congress set the number of Supreme Court Justices at nine, which is also true. Basically, all of these arguments flow together into the catchphrase, “we have 13 Circuit Courts of Appeal, and so we should have 13 Justices.”
See, back in the day, each Supreme Court Justice was responsible for one lower Circuit Court of Appeal. Procedurally, appeals from the lower circuits are heard first by the Justice responsible for that circuit. But now we have 13 lower Circuit Courts of Appeal, meaning some Justices have to oversee more than one. If we expanded the Court to 13 Justices, we'd get back to a one to one ratio for Supreme Court Justice per Circuit Court of Appeal.
But it doesn't actually matter how many circuits each Justice presides over, because all the Justices do is move an appeal from the lower court to the Supreme Court for the full Court to consider whether to hear the appeal.
Their function is purely clerical.
It doesn't matter.
One justice could oversee all 13 circuits while the other eight went fishing, kind of like hazing a rookie on a team. And it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference in terms of the number of cases the Supreme Court hears. It's just a question of who has to work on Saturdays.
Indeed, I'm not even sure that I want the Court to hear more cases. These people are unelected, and these people already have too much power. More cases just gives them more opportunities to screw things up. I don't need the Court to make more decisions. I need the Court to make fewer shitty decisions. And for that, I need to reform how the Court makes those decisions. And for that, I need more people. And I need those people to make their decisions in panels.
Those lower courts, those 13 Circuit Courts of Appeal, almost all of them operate with more than nine judges. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has — wait for it — 29 judges!
All the lower courts use what's called a panel system. When they catch a case, three judges are chosen at random from all the judges on the circuit to hear the case. Those three judges then issue a ruling. If the majority of the circuit disagrees, they can vote to rehear the case as a full circuit.
The legal jargon here is called “en banc” when the full circuit hears the case.
But most of the time, that three judge panel ruling is the final ruling on the issue, with the circuit going en banc only when they believe the three judge panel got it clearly wrong.
Think about how different it would be if our Supreme Court operated on a panel system instead of showing up to Court knowing that six conservative Justices were against you, or the one or two conservative Justices that you invited onto your super yacht are guaranteed to hear your case.
You literally wouldn't know which Justices you'd get on your panel.
Even on a six-three conservative court, you might draw a panel that was two-to-one liberals, or you might draw Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Barrett instead of Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch, which could make a huge difference. Either way, you wouldn't know which Justices you'd get.
Not only does that make a big difference in terms of the appearance of fairness, especially in this time when some Justices are openly corrupt, it also makes a big difference in terms of what kinds of cases and arguments people would bring to the Court. Without knowing which Justices they'd get, litigants and red state attorney generals would have to tailor their arguments to a more center mass, mainstream temperament, instead of merely shooting their shot and hoping their arch conservatives can bully a moderate or two to vote with them.
Now, you can do panels with nine or 13 Justices, but you pretty much have to do panels with 29 Justices. Overloading the Court with Justices would essentially force them to adopt the random assignment process used by every other Court.
That would be good.
Sure, litigants could always hope for en banc review, where the full partisan makeup of the Court could be brought to bear. BUT, getting a majority of 29 Justices to overrule a panel decision requires 15 votes. Consider that right now you only need four votes, a minority of the nine member Court, to get the full Court to hear a case.
I'm no mathlete, but I'm pretty sure that 15 is just a higher bar.
That brings me to my next big point about expanding the Court to 29: Moderation.
Most people say that they do not want the Court to be too extreme to either side. Generally, I think that argument is bollocks. I, in fact, do want the Court to be extreme in its defense of voting rights, women's rights, and human rights. But maybe I'm weird.
If you want the Supreme Court to be a more moderate institution, then you should want as many Justices on the Supreme Court as possible. Why? Because cobbling together a 15-14 majority on a 29 member Court will often yield a more moderate decision than a five-four majority on a nine member Court.
Not going to lie. The law is complicated, and judges are quirky. If you invited five judges off the street over for a barbecue, they wouldn't be able to agree on whether hot dogs and hamburgers count as sandwiches.
It's simply easier to get five people to do something extreme than it is to get 15 people to do something extreme.
Think about your own life.
If you wanted to hike up a damn mountain, that is an activity for you and a couple of your closest friends. You're not taking 15 people to climb a mountain. That's not even a hike. That's an expedition, and you're expecting one or two of them to be eaten by bears on the way to the top. But if you're organizing an outdoor activity for 15 people, you're going to go to the park, and your friends will be expected to bring their own beer.
Most likely, adding 20 Justices would moderate the conservative majority just by putting enough people and personalities in the mix that it would be harder for them to do their most destructive work.
Just think about how the five worst senators you know, or the five worst congresspeople you can think of, often don't get their way because they can't even convince other members of their party to go along with their nihilist conservative ride.
Note, I said Conservative majority.
The astute reader will notice that I have not said that I want to add 20 fire-breathing liberal comrades who will stick it to Das Kapital for the rest of their lives. No, I believe the benefits of this kind of court expansion are so great — panels and the moderation from having more justices trying to cobble together en banc majority opinions — that I'd be willing to split the new justices ten and ten with conservative choices.
A 16-13 conservative leaning court would just be better than a six-three conservative court, even if my guys are still in the minority. The only litmus test I'd have for this plan is that all 20 have to be objectively pro-Democratic, self-government. All 20 have to think the Supreme Court has too much power. You give me 20 people who think the court should not be rulers in robes, and I'll take my chances.
However, there's no objective reason for elected Democrats to be as nice and friendly as I am when adding 20 Justices. Off the top, seats should be split eleven to nine, because Mitch McConnell and the Republicans must be made to pay for their shenanigans with the Merrick Garland nomination under Barack Obama. Republicans stole a seat. Democrats should take it back, full stop. I will take no further questions about this.
From there, this is where Democrats could, I don't know, engage in political hardball instead of being SAPS like always.
You see, right now, Republicans are dead set against court expansion because they are winning with the Court as it is. I can make all of the pro-reform, good government arguments under the sun, and the Republicans will ignore them because, again, they're winning right now.
But if you put forward a bill to add 20 seats, the Republican incentives possibly change: obstruct, and the Democrats push through court expansion on their own, and add 20 Justices of their own choosing, and you end up with people like, well, like me on the court. Or Mitch McConnell could release Senators to vote for the plan, and Republicans can share in the bounty.
It puts a different kind of question to McConnell: Join, get nine conservative Justices and keep a 15-14 conservative majority on the court, or Obstruct, and create a 23 to six liberal majority on the court, and trust that Republicans will take over the House, Senate, and White House so they can add 20 of their own Justices in the future.
Note that McConnell will have to run that whole table while overcoming a super liberal Supreme Court that restores the Voting Rights Act and strikes down Republican gerrymanders. Good luck, Mitch.
My plan wins either way.
Either we get a 29 person court that is more moderate, we get a 29 person court that is uber liberal, or McConnell does run the table and we end up with a 49 person court or a 69 person court. And while Republicans are in control of that bloated body, everybody understands that the Court is just a political branch there to rubber-stamp the acts of the President who appointed them.
Perhaps then, voters would start voting based on who they want to be in control of that court, instead of who they want to have a beer with.
The court is either fixed, or neutered.
It's a win-win.
I know 20 is a big number. I know we've all been institutionalized to believe that incremental change is the only change possible. And I know it sounds fanciful to ask for 20 when the starting offer from the establishment of the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and President Joe Biden, is zero.
But like a doctor with poor bedside manner, I'm less interested in people's feelings and more interested in fixing the problem.
If you give me two Justices or four Justices, I can reverse a number of conservative policies that they've shoved through a Supreme Court that has already been illegitimately packed with Republican appointees. If you give me a few Justices, I can reestablish a center-left, pro-democracy majority… at least until those new Justices die at the wrong time, under the wrong president.
But if you give me 20 Justices, I can fix the whole fucking thing.
—ELIE MYSTAL, In Contempt of Court
#politics#elie mystal#scotus#court packing#packing the court#roberts court#john roberts#federalist society#the federalist society#republicans
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I'm seeing a lot of leftists complain about Biden not being able to do anything and how Republican presidents were able to write executive orders for seemingly whatever they wanted, and I got confused. So i wanted to ask: why does it seem like Republicans can pass whatever they want whenever they want but Democrats can't?
Welp. This is, yet again, another Online Leftist "argument" that isn't correct, doesn't give an accurate view of the situation, and doesn't propose any helpful alternatives. I know that the Republicans can often feel like an overwhelming and unstoppable evil machine, but the truth is that despite the chaos and damage of Trump's four years to American democratic society and sociopolitical norms, he didn't actually pass much legislation -- even with a compliant Republican-controlled Congress from 2016-18. The Republicans didn't even succeed in legislatively repealing the ACA, despite trying zillions of times to do it, and mostly just passed tax cuts for rich people and other bad economic policy, since they could do it with budget reconciliation (the same process that Democrats used to pass the American Rescue Plan with only 50 votes in the Senate and no Republican support). Because budget/financial legislation isn't subject to the filibuster, the Republicans could pass it with the same simple-majority vote. But they didn't really succeed in doing much else.
Next, Trump's most onerous and infamous executive orders -- withdrawing from WHO and the Paris Agreement, the "Muslim Ban," etc etc -- were all in the list of things that Biden reversed on his first day in office. This is why, as myself and others have said, policy based solely on executive orders is never a long-lasting or ideal way to do something, since it's subject to instant repeal if an administration with different ideological priorities happens to succeed you. Besides, this whole "Biden should just executive order everything!!!" demand basically means that he should just... be Trump and try to exercise the presidency like a king? Online Leftists have no patience for or interest in the American democratic legislative process any more than the fascist wingnuts, and while I get the desire for a quick solution, that's still not going to be a magical panacea that fixes everything. It's not an excuse or an escape from having to put in the work.
Right now, Democratic control of Congress is slender and very contingent on whether Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema feel like supporting something in the Senate, and as long as they won't budge on reforming the filibuster, that means Democrats are likewise limited in what they can do from a legislative perspective. It's unfortunate that people deliberately don't understand that there's a huge difference between 60 Democratic senators and 50 Democratic senators, but there is, and since the Obama-era 59/60 Democratic Senate included seats in red states that a Democrat will never win again in the post-Trump era, it's always going to be a matter of very thin margins and major wrangling. None of this is to say that the Democrats shouldn't be doing more; obviously, they should, and I was sharply critical of Biden's initial response to the Roe overturn. Everything I have seen since has confirmed my opinion that the administration wasn't prepared, might not have thought it would really happen even after the draft leaked, and were wary of taking too "drastic" steps or openly trying to overrule the Supreme Court. This results from, as I have said before, Biden's over-reliance on his outdated belief that American democratic institutions will function more or less properly, even if they're currently staffed and controlled by terrible anti-democrat fascist evangelical nutcases. And that is... just not true, unfortunately.
That said, Biden has picked up the pace in recent days: he issued an executive order to maintain abortion access insofar as possible, the Department of Health and Human Services issued guidance that any federally funded hospital must provide a life-saving abortion regardless of state laws, Democrats in the Senate are trying to pass legislation preserving the right to travel out of state for care, and there is talk of Biden declaring a federal public health emergency, which would likewise preserve access at least in the life-threatening cases. None of this happened in the first weeks after the overturn, and I'm glad to see it happening now, even if there are still more steps to be taken. But as I have explained many, many times, an executive order does not magically work everything out and fix it immediately. It directs the relevant federal departments to come up with and implement a solution, and that still takes time and effort. And as I said, it is the least durable and most easily overturned form of policymaking, and should not be the option of first resort for any number of reasons.
The current leftist demand just seems to be "issue an executive order that instantly fixes everything and makes SCOTUS irrelevant so we don't have to feel any guilt about not voting for Clinton and laughing off everyone who warned us that this was going to happen." And that, likewise, is totally unrealistic. Biden can take concrete steps with his executive authority to ameliorate the situation to some degree; he has done some already, and hopefully will be pushed into more. But there is no way to simply remove SCOTUS as a major political piece, or make its decisions irrelevant, or wave our hand and pretend it doesn't exist. There are still obviously far more barriers to abortion care and access than there were while Roe was the law of the land, and that was the direct and intended result of them overturning it. That is not going to disappear.
Anyway. The claim that "Republicans can always do whatever they want and Democrats can't because they just don't try" is not true. As noted, the Republicans didn't actually do that much during Trump's time in office, and all their major victories now are coming as a result of the Republican-hijacked SCOTUS handing down decisions that are not easy to reverse, challenge, or otherwise get around. This is exactly why the Republicans played the long game with the direct goal being to capture the judiciary, especially the Supreme Court, and why Democrats need to expand or significantly reform it if any of us plan on having any civil rights again in our lifetimes. But to do that, we need to get an actual working majority in the Senate, hold the House, and then keep the pressure up for the promised filibuster reform and subsequent legislation to actually get done. I know that pointing out that things take time and have concrete steps that need to be accomplished in a certain order isn't as satisfying or pithy as "just do it all now and stop making excuses!!!", but it is, alas, still the case.
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So, apparently Biden started building more of Trump's border wall back in October. Hardly anyone talked about it, partly because American liberals don't like bringing up similarities between Democrats and Republicans, partly because the war crimes in Palestine were distracting sensible people around the same time. But now that I know, I have stuff to say about it.
Biden promised not to build the wall, he said it won't do anything. His administration says we need to build more walls "in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas". Biden says he's only building any of it because he's legally obligated to, because Congress wouldn't undo the budget appropriations; he then waived dozens of federal laws so the construction wouldn't be slowed down by concerns or lawsuits about endangered species, pollution, indigenous burial sites, drinking water, etc.
One of the articles I read pointed out that barriers at the US/Mexican border have historically been a bipartisan project. Clinton ordered a few fences, Bush and Obama a bunch more. It wasn't a partisan issue until Trump built his campaign and political identity around The Wall; I guess it's not partisan any more, either.
Maybe Blue is still better than Red, but they're working hard to make that as much of a technicality as possible. The Democrats are at best spineless accomplices to the Republicans, and at worst willing collaborators. Some individual Democrats are worth supporting, but do your research.
"Vote Blue no matter who" just gives Democrats more leeway to get away with whatever they want, so long as they are infinitesimally less vile than Republicans.
Links to the news articles I read before writing this can be found below, if you're interested.
Probably the best summary from the articles I read:
An article with a completely different focus, which actually lists all 26 laws Biden is breaking waiving for the barriers' construction:
Two articles that are pretty similar to each other and the first article, but each focus on some different details:
There was technically a fifth article, but it was basically just quotes and talking points repeated ad nauseum in the other articles.
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And you replied: "Of course it is." You knew this was a a lie and it landed you in therapy but you want to believe.
This is the fakest moment in American history. Not since the moon landing has anything been so fake.
But you know what?
It's OK. This moment is actually interesting and fun. A certain sort of goofy obsession has seeped in. No, it's not real, but who cares? We all love this phony love affair. We will continue to love it. We will keep loving it until this spectacularly fake relationship dies and Kelce becomes a cautionary lyric on one of Swift's future albums.
For now, however, despite knowing this relationship isn't real, and likely some type of marketing ploy, we're all going to treat this like it's a true love story. The question is why do we like something that we know isn't real? The reasons, I believe, go beyond some of the obvious and superficial ones. It's not just our societal obsession with stars. It goes deeper than that.
Kelce and Swift represent a fleeting moment where we can all be a little nerdy and little obsessed and maybe even laugh at ourselves a little bit. I'm not talking about Swifties or Kansas City fans. Both of those groups are already hardcore and infatuated. This is about the rest of us. The people who don't have time to get obsessed about anything. The people who normally don't care about football, or how many stadiums Swift has sold out, can feel like they're part of something everyone else gets.
There's a more cynical view that says we're infatuated because our own lives are so boring. It's less that and more that our lives are so full. We don't just have our jobs and loved ones but the world seems chaotic and dangerous. There are threats to democracy, financial stress, a rise in white nationalism and extremism, and a general sense that things could go awry at any moment.
It's not simply that Swift and Kelce are a distraction. It's that sometimes we desperately need one.
This story is also about something else. The ability for all of us to laugh at ourselves. It's likely Swift and Kelce are laughing about this, too. So is Kelce's mom, Donna Kelce. Remember that scene in Kansas City when Travis scored a touchdown and Swift wildly celebrated but Donna, well, was just chill? That wasn't because she's seen her son score dozens of touchdowns. It was because she just didn't want to play along. Donna Kelce doesn't play that.
Yes, this is a conspiracy theory, but it's one of the few accurate ones.
I also believe we like the idea of Kelce and Swift as a couple because, at least as far as we know, they both seem like good human beings. We never truly know the people we follow as celebrities and while I don't know much about the singer, I do know the football player. He's known on the team as a diligent and decent person. He's been described to me by a former coach of his as "laid back" away from football.
Swift herself continues to do things away from her day job that have a considerable and positive societal impact. In a recent Instagram post, Swift pushed her 272 million followers to register to vote. The group Vote.org says it recorded more than 35,000 registrations.
"I've been so lucky to see so many of you guys at my U.S. shows recently. I've heard you raise your voices, and I know how powerful they are," she wrote on Instagram. "Make sure you're ready to use them in our elections this year!"
This, along with other things related to Swift and Kelce, caused the heads of right-wingers to explode. One wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter: "Taylor Swift hates America. Taylor Swift hates President Trump. Taylor Swift loves communism. Maybe Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift would be good together.”
Their anger was another reason to love this relationship.
The last time the public had such an infatuation with a couple was Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley. There was a belief that relationship, like this one, wasn't real either. That one felt weird to watch.
This one feels great to watch.
For the people who hate this story, don't worry, you're not alone. "I'm already over it," Chargers running back Austin Ekeler told the Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz. "I'm over the Taylor Swift stuff. Can we move on please?"
No, we cannot. We will not. How dare you even ask?
And for those of you who say you don't care about any of this, well, you've read this far. You obviously do. Just like the rest of us.
Even if it is totally, without question, completely fake.
#gaylor swift x promances#everyone knows she stunts but they can’t say why she does it#gaylor swift#stunts and shows#Gaylor swift x the msm#USA Today x Gaylor swift
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So You're A USian Who Can't Bring Yourself To Vote Biden, Even Though Trump-Led Republicans Really Want To Kill You And Everyone You Love
You know what, fair.
I do understand where you're coming from, and I'm not going to argue with you about it. Sometimes there are lines we cannot cross even when there are no better choices, and "not supporting genocide" is a respectable hill to die on.
I personally am still taking the harm mitigation stance on the presidential election; Biden is starting to respond to pressure from protestors, slowly but surely, and I think we can work with that a lot more easily than we can work with Trump and the apocalyptic death cult supporting him.
That said, it was a genuinely difficult decision to make, and I'm still not sure it's the right one. I'm not going to judge you for going the other way.
What I am going to ask of you- what I am going to beg of you- is that you vote the rest of the ballot. Why?
1. It sends a stronger message.
If you don't vote at all, the easy assumption for pundits and politicians to make is that you didn't give a fuck, just like the many, many people who don't bother every year. The unfortunate reality of a two party system is lack of support for one side translates to support of the other side. A big Republican turnout and a small Democrat turnout sends the message that people as a whole like Republicans and want them to keep doing what they're doing. It pushes Dems right and emboldens the worst human beings on Earth to keep killing us.
But if a lot of people show up to vote, but don't vote for a president? In a presidential election? That's damn near unheard of. That sends a different, much more specific message: "Fuck these two bastards in particular". It tells the Democratic Party that there are people who are engaged in electoral politics (they don't give a fuck about people who aren't engaged in electoral politics), who will vote for Dems, but only if those Dems meet a minimum standard of human decency.
2. It keeps us alive long enough to fix things.
A president is not a king, and they only get away with acting like kings if the rest of the government lets them. Has way too much power been concentrated in the executive branch over time? Yeah. Does your average Democrat have a spine made of soggy cardboard? Yeah. But limits on executive power are still limits. The fact of the matter is that either Biden or Trump is going to be president, and if enough people refuse to vote for Biden, it's going to be Trump. We all remember how bad Trump was, and we know he and his followers want to make him dictator for life and murder all his detractors (read: us). We know Trump himself doesn't care about the conservative culture war, but he loves power and he's desperate for popularity, so he will give the evil Christofascist fuckers whatever they want in exchange for those two things. We know Trump enjoys hurting people for the sake of hurting them, because it makes him feel powerful and secure. Last time, a lot of damage was mitigated by the Supreme Court, but this time the Republicans have the court.
If we want to live through the next four years (and still hopefully have the right to vote at the end of them), we need to have Not-Republicans in control of the legislative branch. More importantly, because states generally have more power over their own governance than the federal government does, we need to keep Republicans out of the state and local governments as much as possible.
(There's also the issue that if progressives and radical leftists don't vote, but more centrists/people who actually like the Democratic Party and Biden as opposed to voting for damage control reasons do, the people who get voted in will be more conservative and less likely to actually hamper Republicans in any meaningful way. This is more of a primary issue, and the primaries are over, but it's still worth mentioning.)
And if Biden wins anyway? You still want Democrats in the legislative branch and in your state governments, because if Republicans are locked out of those places, it gives us the breathing room we need to demand better of our elected officials and removes the excuse that nothing will get done unless we're sufficiently "bipartisan". Democrats are easier to apply pressure to. Democrats of the wet cardboard spine variety are much easier to apply pressure to when they can't blame the scary Republicans for their own cowardice, apathy, or greed.
3. There are Democrats who will actually help us, but they need your votes to do so.
If you live in Michigan, you're especially lucky, because you get to vote for Representative Rashida Tlaib. Rep. Tlaib is a Palestinian-American woman who has been extremely vocal about her opposition to blind military support for Israel. She's also been vocal about issues such as immigrant rights, environmental justice, community supports for elderly and other vulnerable people, and healthcare, to name just a few. And she's not alone.
Again, pay special attention to state and local elections in your area. It's a lot easier to get genuine allies into smaller positions, and conversely it's a lot easier for The Worst People On Earth to get their own allies into these positions. This is partly because there's a smaller audience to appeal to, and partly because fewer people pay attention to the small elections. Do you want to protect trans kids? Vote for school board members. Do you want your city to be a sanctuary city? You need to pay attention to your mayor and your district representative. Find out who is, or is likely to be, on specific committees, such as agriculture or LGBTQ rights. These elections generally affect you and your community more than the presidential election does anyway.
4. The Glorious Revolution is not happening within the next seven months.
Electoral politics fix nothing by themselves. Voting is always going to be a method of shoring up defenses and disempowering the worst elements of our society. Ultimately, the US is not a good and noble country with some currently bad leaders; it's a colonialist, capitalist world power designed from the start and refined over time to give a few people a lot of power and wealth at the expense of everyone else, not just here, but everywhere in the world. It's important to recognize this. It's important to act in other ways to dismantle that power before it kills us all.
It is also important to recognize that you will not accomplish this before the next presidential election. You will not accomplish this very shortly after the next presidential election either.
Ideals are never as important as real human beings. Ideals are in fact useless if they do not serve real human beings. Your first priority, always, needs to be people. Do what you can to keep people alive. Do what you can to support them. When Republicans are in power, more people die. More people here die. More people in the rest of the world, including Palestine, Sudan, etc. die. That doesn't mean Democrats' hands are clean. It doesn't mean we shrug, flip the trolley switch, and move on with our lives as though nothing else could be done. It means we use every tool at our disposal to keep people alive, and we recognize that voting is one of those tools.
Smarter and better read people than me have said what I'm about to say much more eloquently, but sometimes it feels like The Revolution is like a leftist version of the Rapture; a single grand moment, long foretold, that will come all at once without warning and wash away all oppression and terror, leaving only peace and brotherhood when the smoke clears. People talk about it like it's something you only need to wait for and have faith in, and never forsake by engaging in ideologically impure action. I don't think that's how this works. I don't think that's how anything works, or ever has worked. Things change; change comes in one form or another, for better or for worse, as inevitably as the passage of time, and human history will not stop after some great, satisfying climax. Big dramatic changes always prove in the end to have been underpinned by many small ones, over long, long stretches of time. Tearing down a wall one brick at a time is still tearing down a wall.
Actions like the student protests are more important and more effective at building the kind of world we want to live in than voting, if you look at each by itself, but you don't have to. You don't have to choose between chip damage and a more meaningful confrontation. You can make the path just a little bit easier. That's what voting is.
In Conclusion
Back in the 2020 primaries, I joked that I would vote for a moldy ham sandwich if it ran against Trump. Then Biden got the nomination, and I said I didn't actually mean we should nominate a moldy ham sandwich.
Biden has done some very useful, important, and meaningful things, which I'm sure other people will be happy to tell you about in detail. He has also failed in some significant ways, and done some incredibly morally reprehensible things (as, to be clear, every single US president in history has); again, other people will be happy to tell you about that in detail. I know the breaking point for many of us has been seeing the horrors Israel is inflicting on Palestine, knowing our tax dollars are paying for that mass murder, and hearing Biden say that he does not care. I'm not going to defend that, because it's indefensible. I'm not going to make excuses for that, because there are none.
I'm just asking you to remember that the presidency is not the only thing at stake this year.
Please, help keep us a little bit safer. Keep Republicans out of your local and state government positions. Get people into the House and Senate who will, at worst, not make things significantly worse; if you can, get people who will stand up to Trumps and Bidens alike.
Don't throw our lives away.
#Snail babble#US stuff#politics#voting#Biden#free Palestine#god I hate that this is an argument I have to make#why can't Trump and Biden both get eaten by tigers or something#I'm gonna regret making this post I can feel it
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But, really, wouldn't it be more antisemitic NOT to believe in blood libel?
I should really stop reading the news, but it's less personal than the feed. Nevertheless, I do start to feel like I'm losing my damn mind.
OK, so dual loyalty is a bona fide antisemitic lie with historic credentials. It got Jews killed as far back as Roman times and can still get them killed today. And it's flexible! It got Japanese-Americans thrown in camps in Word War II, and, oddly enough, has also been used against Catholics.
So it's SUPER fuckin weird to see all the Democratic pushback in this article is characterized as, "Of COURSE we support Israel and will consider the dual loyalty of our Jewish constituents in our behaviour and policy! Our party LOVES Israel/Jewish people and considers them interchangeable!" with no room for "fuck your fucking obvious antisemitic premise, we will not engage with the topic on these terms."
I don't know if it's the press or the party (it's probably both) but the Democratic side of the story is: We accept the terms and will help silence anti-colonial, anti-genocide Jewish voices, but we need to correct this misinformation about Democratic support of Israel. They support it SO MUCH! A person can make public statements disapproving of a genocide and still do everything in their power to make sure it continues - if that's what The People want!
Yes. A person can. Boy, can they. But that's beside my point.
Imagine doing this with blood libel, another antisemitic slur with legs. Imagine having an international conversation where where all the loudest voices accept that the Jews will be drinking a certain amount of Catholic blood, they need it - nevermind all the Jewish voices insisting they don't! - and it would be terribly insensitive of us to deny them that, really. Imagine, also, that there are non-zero Jewish voices out there agreeing with the lie, for political reasons. The motivation is generational trauma that continues to this day, and it's hard to make good decisions under those circumstances, but this is politics. This is political strategy. If you value nationbuilding over not perpetuating antisemitic lies, for whatever reason, this looks like a good play right now!
My obvious political leanings aside, just from a historical perspective, this is not a good play. Just... none of it. If you want safety or stability or a foothold in the Middle East, or to win elections... Maybe you'll get away with it this cycle. Maybe. But you're running up a bill here, and the most-vulnerable people will be paying it. They're already paying right now.
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For all you stupid Biden teet suckers, let me say one sentence that will finalize this entire mentality. Trump did not commit genocide. It doesn't matter if he could, it doesn't matter if he almost did; he did not. Biden DID commit genocide. Biden is worse than trump. Yes, they're both evil. But trump, combining all of his Decades of work, has literally killed less than biden. By significantly a lot. But the fact that you actually think Trump is more evil when the actions and facts refute you shows how much the stupid mentality of blue no matter who will actually God damn fuck you over too, you morons. Biden's a failure. Trump is a failure. But Biden is worse. This is not a debate. This is based solely on his voting actions since the 90s. Which by the way Trump wasn't even in politics back then. Dumbasses. Throw both of them in jail, do not allow any of those affiliated with those two run, and let's get some actual fresh faces. Maybe if we didn't make running just to get onto the ballot millions of dollars we could actually have decent people in the running. But you don't think about that. Like the Electoral college. Or super pacs. Or lobbying. Or citizens united. All things that determine the president more than your fucking vote does. But again don't think about that. Cuz it's easier not to think isn't it? Because if you had to think, ACTUALLY THINK, you would have to admit basically your votes never mattered, you did vote for the lesser of two evils but that's still endorsing evil pushing us closer to evil more each time, and now we have a genocide of an entire people due to a democratic president. Blood is on your hands. That's why you want it ignored. Cuz you can't find the fucking soap...(hint there isn't strong enough soap to clean away the sins you have ignored)
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OK. I'm going to go off about voting for a minute.
First, it is fucking weird that the tumblr fight over this is Side One: You Must Vote For A Democrat For President No Matter What, Don't Even Think Of Voting Third Party Or Whatever, This Is A Moral Imperative vs Side 2: Voting Is For Chumps.
Uh, ok?
So, the people I know in real life have a spectrum of political beliefs, mostly I don't interact with actual conservatives much but I do interact with the sort of people who think that Bernie Sanders is too far left and people who think he's just about right and people who aren't really thrilled with anyone who has a snowball's chance in hell of getting elected president and people who think that states shouldn't exist. And people whose beliefs don't necessarily line up perfectly with the left-right framework, even when you let the left side go that far.
Mostly, I know people who want minimum wage to be higher and public schools to be better funded and immigrants to not be treated like complete shit, things like that. Sometimes they also do land acknowledgements and stuff.
And these people vote. And they call their representatives. And they campaign for politicians they like. And they go to protests. And they go to town hall meetings and ask questions and sometimes shout down whoever's speaking.
And you know what?
I want minimum wage to be higher. I want public schools to be better funded -- I'm critical of schools and I think truancy laws are fucked up, but given that schools are a thing I want them to have more money than they have. Similarly with minimum wage, I don't think anybody should have to work, but given that in practice most people do, I want a lower wealth gap and I want everyone to have enough resources to live on and raise kids on, and one of the most effective short to mid term ways to get closer to that goal is raising minimum wage. I want open borders, but failing that I at least want things like the DREAM act and less blatant cruelty from ICE and sanctuary cities.
And I want schools to be able to teach about historical racism and to use books like Maus as teaching aids and to be able to say the word "gay", and the most direct way to get that is to vote for people for school board who also want those things. (Although, being a PITA is sometimes effective against elected officials who don't want those things, so it's not the only option.)
And I want the criminal justice system to get completely scrapped, but that's not going to happen tomorrow but what can happen is electing more sympathetic and justice oriented people to roles like the district attorney and public defender. And sometimes getting the right people into local office, county boards of supervisors and whatnot, can mean that the cops get less funding and that programs designed to help ex-convicts have places they can live and work after getting out get more funding, or at least that things don't get worse.
And of course showing up to town hall meetings and protesting in the streets are still options, but they're still options whether there's relatively cool people in office or not, and when there's relatively cool people in office you can push things more towards what you want and when there's shitty people in office you end up doing reactive actions that might or might not work, like when Bush got elected president -- for the love of all that is good and worthwhile, autocorrect, I do not want to dignify that title with a capital letter -- and then 9/11 happened, and anti-globalization activism in the US basically stopped dead so that we could all protest the Iraq War instead, which may or may not have done no good whatsoever but certainly did not end the Iraq War.
A formative expeience in my life was Critical Mass. I got really into bicycle activism and I loved Critical Mass. And not everybody who does Critical Mass, which is basically the sort of protest where you don't have a permit and you might get arrested on wheels, seriously one time San Francisco mass went onto the Bay Bridge, also goes to town hall meetings, and probably not everyone who goes to the town hall meetings does Critical Mass, but a lot of people do both. There's nothing stopping people from doing both. It's not ideologically inconsistent to both sometimes block traffic with a bunch of bicycles because getting bike lanes striped takes too long and you want to be safe riding a bicycle on the streets right now, and begging/pressuring your elected representatives to stripe more bike lanes. You can do both. I did both. People do both all the time.
And sometimes eg some fucking jerk of a rich boy is running for mayor and wants to cut general assistance payments for homeless people to under $50 a month and is making this out to somehow be good for them, and you've been feeding people with Food Not Bombs but Food Not Bombs needs someone to be a liaison with the Coalition on Homelessness, and the Coalition on Homelessness is freaked out about the proposition, so you do electoral politics stuff with them while you're also feeding homeless people without a permit, because nothing's stopping you from doing both. (And maybe you're also a young person who has a lot of free time and a lot of energy but no real idea of how to get anything done, so you just throw a lot of energy at problems and hope something does some good.) (hypothetically, I mean.)
Like what was I going to do, just tell the more experienced people at the Coalition on Homelessness, most of whom had been homeless and who had way more expeience actually doing stuff than I did, that this whole distributing door hangers thing was bullshit and I wasn't going to help them do it? Because I knew better? Because I thought voting didn't matter?
I mean, I guess I wouldn't have had to look them in the face and say that, I could have just told Food Not Bombs I wasn't going to be a liaison -- I was an absolute dogshit liaison anyways, I had no clue what I was doing -- and then I wouldn't be doing anything with the Coalition anyways. But they had a problem, a threat that was going to make things worse for the group they were advocating for, a group that most of them at least used to be a part of, and I could help them, or I could not help them, and the way they wanted people to help was through electoral politics. Which also involved some protests because people do both all the time. But which also involved a lot of doorhangers.
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Look, we need to discuss something: regardless of who we vote for or how loud we get, the federal U.S. government is going to back Israel.
Before I say anything else, let me be clear that I am NOT saying to stop speaking out. Whatever our government does or doesn't do, we still have an individual responsibility to make Palestinian voices heard and support the victims of this genocide however we can. Sometimes, you push back not because you expect a wall to fall but because, at the end of the day, you know you'd be a little less human if you didn't. Palestinians deserve whatever hope and support we can give them.
But that doesn't mean the official U.S. stance is going to change. Not right now, not overnight, probably not even within the next year. Our federal government is going to back Israel because they're our puppet state for Islamophobia in the Middle East and a great way for us to pretend we care about Jewish people without actually helping any Jews. Neither the party in power nor the sitting president will change this. All of our presidents since 1947 have supported genocide in Palestine in one way or another, whether they were liberal or conservative.
This is not a good thing. There is no positive way to spin this. The U.S. is a colonialist genocidal state at its root, and neither party has made any steps to correct it.
A lot of people won't like me saying that because it removes the illusion of choice. "If we just elect X, then we can end the genocide," is not an accurate statement. No choice we make politically is going to make our country remove its boot from Palestine's throat.
But -- and this is the part that even more people are going to hate me for -- our only option is still to vote for Biden.
Again, let me be clear. I don't like Biden. I despise him. He's willfully committing genocide and has been this whole time. Point blank. End of. But that whole "illusion of choice" thing? Yeah, that also applies to American electoral habits. Other countries love to call us stupid for having a two party system and being so crippled by it. They're right -- it's an awful system and a proponent of our ruin. But the same countries who complain about it and say we should just dismantle it also seem to think we can do it overnight, and that just isn't possible. Everyone wants a revolution, everyone wants an uprising, but no one is willing to organize one. They want it to happen passively and jump in only if it doesn't inconvenience them. Or they want to pull big stunts like bombing a government building instead of doing the hard work of assigning people to stations, coordinating multifaceted attacks, gathering supplies. They don't want to get involved in the process of changing our laws or political landscape to put us in a position where we have more than 2 candidates to vote for.
And that's the truth. It's ugly, it's stupid, but we aren't mindless sheep for defaulting to the 2 party system. We base our choices on it because it's the only real "choice" we have -- back to that illusion. Voting for a third party candidate without any promise of a majority turnout is just going to split the Democratic vote in half, and that's how we get a lifetime of Trump as dictator. That is not an exaggeration. That is a genuine threat we are staring down right now.
Both parties suck. Both parties are committing genocide. But that doesn't make them equally evil. A conservative president would be announcing outright war on Palestine instead of pretending to give a shit about them while actively funding Israel. A conservative president would be sending all of our troops to Iraq and Iran and Yemen instead of murdering individuals or small groups in those countries. (Every single life is sacred. Biden's murders of Iraqi, Iranian, and Yemeni citizens is unforgivable and inexcusable. But it could also be so much worse. We could be doing to them what we're already doing to Palestine. We already have before.) A conservative president would be trying to remove us from the UN altogether and pass laws that would prevent individual citizens from supporting Palestine or even speaking out about it. A conservative president would be adding more fuel to our burgeoning civil war and stripping more and more rights from women, people of color, queer people, and immigrants.
Biden is not good. He isn't. Pretending otherwise is foolishly optimistic at best. But he's better than Trump or any other conservative at all for that matter. And he's also proven that he can be pushed further left when votes are on the line and people are loud enough about it. Even if he wasn't, though, he's still allowing us the right to vote. Trump won't.
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My School President Episode 11: So what now?
Man I freaking loved this episode. Grief, healing and the power of friendship? An overprotective mother's internal struggle to let her son grow up and live his own life? Sign me up. An incredibly focused episode this week, as Chinzhilla doesn't win Hot Wave and almost comes apart over it, and Ms. Potjanee contemplates how to broach the subject of Gun with Tinn now that she's realised they're together.
Verse: Sad est moi
Didn't I give it all?
Tried my best
Gave you everything I had, everything and no less
Adele | Take It All (2011)
The stages of grief, starring Anger as the main character. Watching our boys first turn away from each other, then lash out at each other as Por (!) tries desperately to keep them all together...that hurt a lot. To fail at this thing they had so much of their self-worth tied up in causes a big spiral. They really left everything on that stage, and still came up short. Life goes that way sometimes. Add in the disastrous return trip to the temple at the beach where everything that can go wrong does go wrong, and it's no wonder they're all at each other's throats. Harsh words are spoken. Fisticuffs are threatened. Tears are shed. Watching Win lash out at Gun was especially painful, because Win has been the most loyal. He has been the one most supportive of Gun's leadership, so to see him scream repeatedly at Gun that their loss is his fault...oof. We already know that's exactly how Gun feels, so for Win to just scream it in his face over and over and over was the absolute worst. I hated every minute of the boys fighting, they're all so fragile, so scared, so hurt, so sad.
We've already seen that Por may be dumber than a bag of hair, but has a keen emotional intelligence. I loved him bringing the fight to a swift close by taking the blame onto himself, by reminding them that THEY ARE FRIENDS FIRST AND FOREMOST and they shouldn't be fighting like this, that they have to mourn together, and keep going. He basically shames them all into acting right, all while wearing a fab outfit and sporting a broken leg. And then Yak, who understands intimately this particular pain, calls to remind them in his own way that there's life after this. That losing Hot Wave doesn't mean they're losers. Yak's band winning their Freshy Music Contest (look, in my head BB and MSP exist in the same universe, just go with it) is some sweet after the bitter. This defeat isn't the end, as much as it feels that way. There will be victories to come, and one of those victories is getting to see the next generation try and hopefully succeed.
There hasn't been a great deal made of the fact that the Music Club doesn't have any juniors for Gun et al to hand the Holy Chinchilla over to, but it's been noteworthy to me. Chinzhilla is a tradition that's been passed down, along with You Got Ma Back, for generations we've been told, but Gun and the gang seem to be the end of the line. There hasn't been interest in joining the bunch of slacker losers who just eat BBQ pork and never accomplish anything. But it seems like the band are more loved than they think, with the student body voting for them to play the prom. The school year might be winding down, graduation might be approaching, but there's still time for some kid or kids to poke their head around that corner and ask 'is this Music Club?'
Bridge: Facing the music
I'm holding on (barely)
Mama's got a lot to learn (it's heavy)
I'm holding on (catch me)
Mama's got a lot to learn (teach me)
Adele | My Little Love (2021)
The other big story this week is Ms. Potjanee slowly and quietly coming to terms with her baby boy being queer. She almost fumbles it at every juncture, but she always pulls back and does the right thing. I was SO NERVOUS when she went to see Gun, but in the end she didn't put her jumbled feelings on him and I breathed a sigh of relief. Her asking Tinn flat out if Gun invited him to the beach, and him deciding to trust her with the truth that he is going on Gun's invitation, and her just quietly allowing it without asking questions in that moment...it's all so well done. Potjanee is trying so hard to do right by her son, even as she struggles with all that means, like not being overprotective and trusting that she has raised Tinn to handle the slings and arrows of the world. It's a different response from Ms. Gim, who I think is going to start wedding planning when Gun tells her he and Tinn are dating, but it's still the response of a loving mother. It's why I don't buy the cliffhanger dread and the doom preview: because Potjanee has continued to struggle but in the end do the right thing.
Ad Libs
It looks like most of the Chinzhilla boys haven't secured a university place. I wasn't surprised at Gun and Win, but Pat and Por not having future plans in place yet was a bit unexpected. I wonder if this is kids who've done the direct admission exams at this point while the others are still preparing for the GAT.
Watching Chinzhilla dream-sing 'Healing' to themselves put me right in my feels.
Is Ford gunning for the Mix Sahaphap sultriness crown? There was WAY too much sauce for a high school romcom coming off Por when he was flirting with Tiw.
That said, the Tiw/Por came out of nowhere but I refuse to be mad about it.
Tinn is EXACTLY the kind of boy who would gift his musician boyfriend a custom-made music box that plays the love song he wrote for him. Mixtapes are for the weak!
They're playing with us now when it comes to a Tinn/Gun kiss...lol. But in a way I'm glad they're dealing with the parents stuff first.
After the Bad Buddy episode 12 preview I'm absolutely not believing a single moment of this one.
The finale is going to be prom, and I can't think of a more fitting way to end this story (until Our Skyy 2 anyway).
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New Rule: Atheists Day | Real Time with Bill Maher
New rule: You shouldn't be able to talk about DEI anymore in America - DEI, that's diversity, equity and inclusion - without including atheists.
Atheists. We're approaching a third of the population now, I shouldn't have to beg for this, for God's sake. it's outrageous there are this many of us and there are still zero representation in government
Congress has 535 members and only a handful will even sheepishly admit they're "religiously unaffiliated."
The Supreme Court is two Protestants, one Jew, and six people more Catholic than the Pope.
And even intellectual presidents like Obama who admit to being secular humanists have to pretend to be religious. No one has been able to admit their shameful secret: "I don't believe in ghosts."
Next Sunday is Easter, so enjoy. Enjoy, if that's your thing, bunny rabbits that shit eggs to celebrate the Son of God. Whatever floats your Ark.
But it's not fair that people who belong to one of the big religions, they all get this cosmic personal day, where the world revolves around them. I mean, here we are in the middle of the great egg shortage, and yet next Sunday we're going to take the few eggs we have and hide them in the yard?
There's also now a movement for schools to officially recognize Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, and I'm all for it or anything that gets our fat kids to eat less.
But while approximately three million Americans celebrate Ramadan, 100 million say they have no religion at all. What the fuck? Where's our day?
Is that really so much to ask that this many people get one day a year when we recommit ourselves to observable reality? One day with no atonement, no corpse reanimation, no fasting, no tree in your house, no big rock to circle, no dirt on your forehead, no candles to light and, please God, no fruitcakes.
Just a yearly three-day weekend to celebrate your deeply held belief that with Monday off you can drink on Sunday night. And get to sleep in because there is no place to gather to affirm we all believe the same shit, we know what we believe and what we don't believe. We don't need to rub elbows with other people who don't believe it too.
And we don't need to commercialize our holiday like all the other religions do. Atheist Day is about not buying something. Like virgin birth. I'm not buying it.
We have the numbers. We can do this. The fastest growing religious group in the United States are nones. No not the kind who used to beat you with a ruler for being left-handed. I mean people who, when asked how much they want to be involved with a religion, say none.
The unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular, has risen from five percent in 1972, to 15 percent in 2005, to 32 percent today. You're welcome.
And lest you think it's only young educated white liberals, no. Just about everybody is losing their religion. Or as I call it, holy ghosting.
The average age of a none is 43. A third are people of color. A quarter voted for Trump. 70 percent don't have a four-year college degree. Millennials are the first generation that are less than a majority Christian. Their idea of hell is a coffee shop with no Wi-Fi.
When asked how often they go to church, 34 percent of younger Millennials answered "seldom/never" or "don't know." Don't know? Hey kids, going to church is like having an orgasm. If you didn't know you did, you didn't.
And that's another great thing about Atheist Day. You don't have to fake it. You don't even have to be an atheist to enjoy it, just like you don't have to be Christian to enjoy Christmas, I still love Christmas.
You don't have to be an atheist to celebrate Atheist Day. I'd like it to be the one day a year that the devout can get a little taste of what it's like to live your life without some mythical daddy figure judging and condemning you for being the exact person he made you.
Atheist Day should be a day for believers to stop and ask yourselves, why? Why? Why make up a being who's constantly disappointed in you? Yyou don't need it - you've got your wife. And your parents, your siblings, your co-workers, your trainer when you don't give a hundred and ten percent. There are plenty of people right here on Earth who will gladly make you feel like a lame, incompetent fuck up. Why make up one more? It's like adding an extra mother-in-law.
Why always be tormented? I better not make Baby Jesus cry. Why? Is he sitting behind you on a plane?
Wouldn't you like one day, one goddamn day in the year when, for 24 hours, you can tell your God to climb down off your ass? Because trying to please a man who's not there sets you up for a lifetime of misery. Just ask Tiffany Trump.
#Bill Maher#Real Time with Bill Maher#Atheist Day#atheism#rise of the nones#leaving religion#decline of religion#religion#christianity#Easter#Easter eggs#egg shortage#diversity equity and inclusion#diversity#equity#inclusion#religion is a mental illness
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Nothing frustrates me more than US election season "leftist v liberal" arguments. Congrats you have missed the point so entirely just to make yourself feel good! I'm just gonna put this under a read more because I don't want to clog my followers dash with my rant
Literally liberals will be like "vote blue no matter who!" And ignore all the opportunities they had to improve the Democratic party and create a party they can stand behind
And leftists will spend more time shitting on liberals and talking about the "real good" They're doing at any chance they get even when faced with genuinely tough theoretical questions than they will actually doing all the things they say they do.
Saw someone wax poetic about all the local work they're doing as like a counter to the argument "what alternative to voting blue do we have" as if that actually answers the question???
Like admit all the reading up on history and theory you're doing is literally useless without telling me you're lying out of your ass about reading theory.
And the using of the Palestinian genocide to make your argument makes me sick, like any modern US election can EVER be a single issue. I saw someone say it genuinely doesn't matter who is in the White House for Palestinians and 1. That's not true at all, and 2. Voting is not a virtue signal, it's a chess move.
Like say it was true that it doesn't matter who the president is (it's not) but let's say it it is. Then you are casting your vote (or not) over ONE issue. I care about Palestinians, absolutely, and I'm obviously not happy with Bidens handling of the genocide, nor do I really want him reelected. But realistically, the alternative choice is the GOP nominee, who is TRUMP.
So if I vote for Trump, or vote green and the green party is not (nor will it ever be) elected, then I am also voting for a guy who fully intends to implement policies designed to kill palestinians. And my brother, for example. Or kill me, for that matter. That vote will go to Trump, who has stated in no uncertain terms that he admires and agrees with Putin and actively supports and wants to strengthen Netanyahu.
So in this thought exercise, assuming that the president doesn't matter to the genocide in Palestine, which I can't even agree to, then voting along the "moral" (read "holy") choice would actively harm other marginalized people. How is that moral again???
Because if you care about Trans kids in Texas, the president matters. if you care about health coverage by your employer for certain life threatening health emergencies, the president matters. if you care about poor kids in city districts getting at least one meal a day at school, the president matters.
Voting is not a moral choice, it is a strategic one. And single issue voting is not a system we can survive on. If we want real radical change, we know we can't rely on voting anymore (could we ever?) But the alternative to voting blue people are asking for DOES NOT EXIST.
If you don't like the democratic nominee, you can't do much about that UNLESS you vote. You don't like who's running? Then YOU run. Believe it or not, you can! You SHOULD actually! We need more common people running for small offices and judgeships.
You don't want to vote for the republican? Well you have two voting options, the third party (which, to my leftists claiming to read history and political theory, you KNOW it's not a viable option for change, we have ample studies and analysis of previous elections to look at) and the the democratic party. And the third option is to abstain from voting.
If you don't vote, pat yourself on the back! You have remained ideologically pure, and should be canonized for your hard, holy work. After all, it takes a lot to do less than the bare minimum, and it's especially hard to be able to say that you lack the skills and adult understanding of the world to make hard decisions between two bad options. You have found the secret answer to choosing between the love for your own kids and the love for your neighbors, something no one has ever had to choose between except for you. But it's a good thing this tough choice fell on your shoulders because, like the Saint you are, you managed to make the only correct (holy) decision. By staying silent you have made it clear that you will never stand aside in the face of adversity. There is no issue in this world that can stop you from doing what is Right (holy) and simply not do the most basic easy thing to push the world towards positive change.
Kiss my ass
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hi! i am seeing people saying that both obama and biden could've codified roe v wade but I just don't understand American politics enough to know if it was actually doable? could you possibly explain how that works? sorry ignore this if you don't feel like doing it but you seem like you know a lot about this stuff and I do not know what to believe in this case :/
Lol no, they're full of shit.
Barack Obama had a supermajority for less than 100 days total during his presidency, and in that time he passed the ACA and signed several important bills into law like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and most importantly, didn't ever have 60 pro-choice votes to codify Roe! The only reason Dems had 60 seats in 2009 for like a few months is because we held seats in Nebraska and Arkansas and South Dakota like those weren't pro-choice senators and the current Democratic Senate caucus is MUCH more pro-choice than the 2009 caucus, even with Joe Manchin as the deciding vote.
Biden has 50 Democratic votes to codify Roe v. Wade, and Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski are willing to sign on, but like, Collins, Murkowski, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema aren't going to blow up the filibuster to do so (even if Sinema's very pro-choice and Manchin said he'd vote to codify Roe without the add-ons the Women's Health Protection Act had like banning Catholic hospitals from not performing abortions). Besides, a bunch of other Dem senators like Mark Warner and Mark Kelly were like "I'll do a voting rights carve-out of the filibuster but not for legislation" and that's aside from my personal belief that killing the filibuster is stupid when Republicans play the Senate game on easy mode with their current coalition.
Mitch McConnell is not a stupid or chaotic man, he's coldly rational. Like, McConnell didn't end the filibuster for judicial appointees, that was Harry Reid in 2013, and McConnell just made Supreme Court appointments to be included in that. He's not lying when he says that Republicans aren't going to end the filibuster for legislation not least since they can confirm judges and lower taxes with a simple majority and he doesn't want his marginal members to take risky votes banning interracial marriage or whatever, but he'll still absolutely use the 50-vote threshold to pass a 15-week abortion ban if they have 53 Senate seats and the presidency come 2025, which is currently the predicted outcome although the Dobbs decision could change a lot.
Democrats used the filibuster hundreds of times during the Trump administration to prevent the GOP from passing stupid shit (when they had the presidency and 53 Senate seats), and a bunch of Democratic senators signed onto a statement saying that Republicans shouldn't kill the filibuster. But after winning the Senate through sheer dumb luck in 2020, every Dem-aligned group wants to end the filibuster to pass their random wish list of items ignoring that they have nowhere near 50 votes for almost every item on that list and that given the Senate seats up in 2024, Democrats are likely to lose the Senate, possibly for a decade, and that's if we keep it in 2022, which is contingent on voters caring more about women's bodily autonomy than gas prices, which I rather doubt knowing the American electorate.
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