gulliver
gulliver's JournalThe reality of the effort is concerning, but the rhetoric used is lousy and ineffective
Would Republicans force a government shutdown if their anti-abortion emails couldn't be directed toward the women in the database? Would they use it to automatically generate a list of police "pregnancy monitoring search warrants?" You can definitely picture abuse happening.
The rhetoric of the article is ineffective. It's ad hominem against the absurd Katie Britt. That's a logical foul and a rhetorical cheap shot. Sure, it's fun, but to me it's self-indulgent.
More concerning is that the article uses the term "pregnant people," which does not appear to be in the legislation being referred to. The legislation, per the article, refers to " pregnant and postpartum women, and women parenting young children." Using "pregnant people" is a rhetorical mistake. That should be obvious. Fans of Katie Britt, for example, love to hear the people who are supposedly defending women's reproductive freedom use the term "pregnant people" instead of "pregnant women." Heck, Katie Britt loves it, I'm sure. It's a surefire way to garner sympathy for her cause from women.
Losing rhetoric deployed on behalf of a good cause (women's reproductive freedom) is immoral in terms of concrete effect. And concrete effect is the best way to judge.
I blame the college administrators and faculty.
It's becoming clear that mass incompetence, disguised cynically as a priggish, showy, ultra-liberalism, has gained a foothold in some educational institutions and is using them for a gravy train. We need some serious reform there. It gives liberalism a bad name, and these institutions have to charge students and parents too much money to pay the salaries of, in effect, opportunist, deadwood, "all talk" types. People who deserve the upward mobility and wisdom that a university can provide are being robbed.
It's sort of the opposite of ethnic cleansing, right?
If you warn the people you are not against (non-combatant Gazans in this case) to leave an area, isn't that different in some way from telling the people you are against to leave an area? The latter is "ethnic cleansing." The former just isn't.
I'm 100% behind Israel's right to defend itself against current and future threats (as I've made clear). I consider the attack by Hamas on Oct. 7th an attack against Israel, the United States, and humanity.
Netanyahu is a worthless asshole in my book. I still remember his manipulations of U.S. politics in the Trump years. He's bad for Israel and the United States. I'm against playing into his hands all the time by using ineffective rhetorical maneuvers. Using the phrases "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" against Israel is music to Netanyahu's ears. It's a rhetorical foul and foolish at best.
WAPO: Six months of the Israel-Gaza war: A timeline of key moments
Six months into the war in Gaza, the human cost has been devastating.
Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, including more than 300 soldiers, and says 256 soldiers have been killed since the start of its military operation in Gaza.
More than 33,000 people have been killed and 75,000 injured in Gaza since the war began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants and says the majority of the dead are women and children.
The dead include more than 170 U.N. workers and seven World Central Kitchen employees, according to those organizations, and more than 90 journalists and media workers, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/07/israel-hamas-gaza-war-timeline-anniversary/
This is an outstanding article shared by the Washington Post, imo. Timeline organized, lots of background and context, lots of links, lots of responsible "according to so-and-so" and "so-and-so says" qualifications on statements.
What do we do to reduce the votes "against Biden" that go to Trump (directly or indirectly)?
We should do those things. Do things that get people to not vote against Biden.
There are other things that we should not do, I believe. My position on things that shouldn't be done is that it is best to not do them.
It probably doesn't lose us any net votes to express it that way I guess
Folks who like to use charged fifty-cent words (thanks Google) will enjoy seeing "patriarchal" and "theocracy" used in a sentence with a sciencey DNA allusion. Sophistication, accusation, and a toot of the social justice trumpet.
Folks who think it's counterproductive will point to the obvious idea that reproductive freedom is best expressed positively using the phrase, well, "reproductive freedom." Easy to agree on that. Those who usually ignore the counterproductive (and therefore indirectly and unintentionally immoral) social justice noisemaking will still want to vote Dem to get reproductive freedom.
Former President Pennywise
We laugh at the orange man, the clown. I'm not sure we understand, though, that it works. Trump's clown costume changes the entire mode in which he is understood. It's Kabuki. It's WWE. It's Jim Baker and Tammy Faye. Only stupider.
Resentment meets fun meets R-rated hypnotist. Sick joke. Dumb.
America's waking up.
Could someone explain the Trump fraud "victimless crime" excuse?
The Trumps, in committing the fraud for which they now have to pay $364 million, inflated the value of their properties to get loans, but they paid the loans back with interest. So abracadabra. No victim. Where's the victim? The banks were paid. Nothing to see here.
Wait. Weren't there other businesses trying to get loans when the Trumps were lying to get that loan money? How many legitimate businesspeople couldn't get loans they needed, because they didn't lie? The creditors lent money to the Trumps that should rightfully have gone to honest businesses. Those businesses, their shareholders, and their employees are the victims.
Not unlike the poor guy who went to Vietnam in Donald Trump's place, honest businesses paid the price for Trump family lies. Shareholders in those businesses might have gotten lower dividends or retirement account gains. Employees might have gotten lower pay. The honest businesses in fact might have gone under for lack of the loan money they deserved that the Trumps wrongfully took.
Okay, so the Trumps victimized some people by inflating the value of their properties when trying to get loans. But understating the value of their properties to unfairly reduce their taxes didn't hurt anybody. Right?
Wait. Taxpayers pay taxes. Pretty sure that's true (or we would call them something besides taxpayers). Couldn't the governments the Trumps cheated out of tax money have taken some of the money the Trumps were supposed to pay and refunded it to taxpayers? Seems like taxpayers got robbed by the Trumps. The Trumps, in other words, victimized taxpayers.
Now what were the Republicans saying about victimless crimes again?
Does Biden need to feed Trump to the media on the age issue?
One of the few places Trump won't go when it comes to Biden is Biden's age. He has even gone so far as to say it's not an issue. Reacting to this latest media frenzy of ineptitude over the Hur report, Trump didn't say the report was about age. Trump lied and said the report was about mental incompetence.
Trump doesn't want to push the button on age. Why?
I think it's pretty obvious. Trump doesn't want to be part of that media and pollster "paycheck-providing news narrative." He steers clear of the jackal pack.
The media and pollsters, for their part, think they are onto some good gravy train stuff with the Biden-only age issue. They know that if they start to take bites out of Trump over his age and obvious mental deficiency, the narrative will become moot. Interest will disappear. Paychecks might dry up even more than they already are.
It's a lot like the old Upton Sinclair idea that it is hard to get someone to understand something when their paycheck depends on their not understanding it. The media convinces itself that "the people" they poll have a "concern," and, luckily for the media, it generates a paycheck. No need to think about balance this time. No need to complicate the issue that is giving me something to say in the two minutes, forty-five seconds I have to fill on CNN to stay in my job. The people have spoken (through the pollsters who get bucks for giving me stuff to say, so I can get bucks too). Nothing to see here. When will Friday get here?
So maybe Biden or Harris should push the age button on Trump? Someone should. Trump would have to respond or "respond by not responding." Haley's been trying to push the button on both, but it hasn't gotten much traction so far.
I haven't seen any serious mistakes by Garland
There's a lot of mistaken criticism of him. That I've seen a whole lot of. From both sides.
The criticism from folks who think of themselves as being on the left is basically that Garland should have self-designed an Attorney General uniform, stuck on some epaulets and medals, and arrested Trump pronto.
The criticism from Trump and folks who think of themselves as being on the right is that what Garland has been doing is essentially what the left wishes he were doing. (See above.)
Great straightness seems bent. I think that's from the Tao Te Ching. Garland is essentially correct in a world where folks have adopted silly, erroneous, superficial, feel-good evaluation criteria concerning correctness.
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