#surely abortion and civil rights have no effect on day to day life

[zombiebcit]

norman reedus. 50. cis man. he / him. ― i see you meet WILLIAM "WILL" GRIMES, huh? they are around for… well, it will be 1 AND A HALF YEAR, now. time flies when you are busy and as part of THE MILITIA, they are. if you want to meet them, they live in B1A2A, i think. people say they are ADAPTABLE + PROTECTIVE, but don’t piss them off, okay? because they can be also UNTRUSTING + UNREPENTANT, so be safe.

BASIC INFO

⸻ FULL NAME: William Daniel Grimes

⸻ AGE: 50

⸻ GENDER: cis man

⸻ PRONOUNS: he / him

⸻ ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: biromantic

⸻ SEXUAL ORIENTATION: bisexual

⸻ SCARS / TATTOOS: many scars & tattos along whole body ;

⸻ OCCUPATION: before: many things ; now: militia ;

⸻ FAMILY: tba grimes ( child, wc ) ;

⸻ PLAYLIST: apologize by grandson ; i come with knives by iamx ; f.w.t.b by yonaka ( grandson remix ) ; 20 precent cooler by ken ashcorp ; devil by shinedown ; play dirty by kevin mcallister + [sebell] ; kill our way to heaven by michl ; devil's backbone by the civil wars ; follow you by bring me the horizon ; no one but you by every avenue ; ;

⸻ INSPO: carol peletier ( the walking dead ) , michonne ( the walking dead ) , ada wong ( resident evil ) , chris redfield ( resident evil ) , tess servopoulos ( the last of us ) , morrigan ( dragon age ) , flemeth ( dragon age ) , zaeed massani ( mass effect 2 ) , urdnot wrex  ( mass effect ) ;

STORY tw: child neglect, drugs, alcohol, discussion of abortion, mention of starvation, allusions to prostitution ;

will's parents didn't cared where he is or what he is doing at all. thye might not have raise their hands, but they didn't loved him either ;

it wasn't a surprise when will got caught up in the wrong crowd and everything that follows one - wild parties with poping whatever was there to just shut his mind off ;

and then, it happened. barely out of the magical line of finally legal age, will's one-night stand, a nice girl from good family who just wanted to have a go at the bad boy came to him with a positive pregnancy test ;

the easy way, the ' right ' way for them would be to go and end it. damn, will even said that to her face and sadi he will pay for it & drive her there.

and he did, but siting there, waiting and see her flinching at every little sound... looking at her stomach and thinking ' there could my kid grow ' made him feel weird.

so will blur out quick ' wait, just wait ' and they had a long and heavy talk about this all ;

she didn't wanted to get rid of kid, but didn't want to be a mother too, having to care about child when she just "started" her life and will... will wanted it now ;

so for the next months, he did everything to get clean, to get better, to find job, any job, and save a little for his kid ;

and then he hold his child in his arms for the first time and that was it. he was a parent.

it wasn't easy, even with the money the girl shoved in his hands few days after brith, with a quick ' just tell them i died. ' ;

he did his best to be a good father, remember what his own father did and did the opposite - care about his kid, telling them he loves them often, showing interest in any littlie thing they showed him ;

he was jumping from job to job, going hungry more often than not just to make sure his kid wasn't, that they had anything they needed ;

working as bartender, he began getting offerts and at some point, he started to accept them. a quick bj there and there was enough to put the food at the table and while he wasn't proud of it, he wasn't ashamed either ;

and then will meet him ;

will know the name man give him was false, he was too clean, tooo charming to be honest ;

but the job offer was too good to pass on, the money could get them out of the shoebox apartament and put his kid in college if will would be smart about spending ;

so he took it and then it was 'take this packcage there', ' keep this person save for evening ' , ' make this person talk ' ;

will did thing, clean out whatever was on his hands - blood more often than not - and go back to being loving father ;

he never told his kid what he did, now or before, just made sure they are as happy as they could ;

he was so proud of them, watching them groing into young adult and starting their own adventure in life ;

and then, the fucking apocalypse happened. at the start, he tried to call, desperate to get in contact with his kid, then he traveled to them just to find them gone ;

rationally, he knows they might be dead, but refuse to acknowledge it ;

it was hard for will to get used to safety of the domus spei, still is. but anytime he is out there, he is still looking ;

WANTED CONNECTIONS

⸻ 01. ' 𝚂𝙾 𝙵𝚄𝙲𝙺𝙸𝙽𝙶 𝙿𝚁𝙾𝚄𝙳 𝙾𝙵 𝚈𝙾𝚄, 𝙺𝙸𝙳𝙳𝙾 '

child. ( main wc ) open. will had them very young, a result of one-night stand when he was 18-20yo, and he raised them alone. at the time when apocalypse happened, they were separated & will spend years looking for them without success. i would say they had pretty good relation but i am open to suggestions. this muse would be here for max 1-2 weeks.

⸻ more tba.

[haml3t]

I read so much news I’m going to start writing to journalists both those whom I like and those who write stupid shit. Starting with the guy from Time who put out this

motherfucking idiot

[therealvinelle]

I've always wondered this, but what do you think the Cullen's political viewpoints would be, given their individual backgrounds? if vampires don't change after they turn, then surely they would all be extremely racist (especially Jasper). would this not come up at some point? they aren't like the Volturi because the Volturi are too old to care, but the Cullens are young enough that they have been brought up with opinions on stuff like sexism, racism, homophobia and the like.

Oh fuck.

You get an early answer because otherwise I'll just chicken out and delete this one, pretend I never saw it.

UMMM.

Since I'm guessing you meant American political viewpoints, we need a disclaimer. I am not American, and not too knowledgeable about your politics. Not just in the sense that I don't follow the day-to-day drama, but as I am not an American citizen there are several things I don't know, can't know because I've never lived in your country and therefore can't know what the effects of living in a country ruled by American policies is like. What I do know is based off of the news in the foreign section, social media (by which I mean tumblr posts), and Trevor Noah's Daily Show.

I am an outsider looking in.

Which is really rather appropriate, since the Cullens are too.

The Cullens go to high school and college, Carlisle works, they pay taxes, they own real estate, and submerge themselves in American culture. Esme, Edward, Rosalie, Emmett, and Bella are young enough that this is in many ways their world, and apart from timeouts they've more or less spent their entire lives, human and vampire, integrated into American society.

Not fully integrated, mind you, they do what they need to to fit in and get to school or, in Carlisle’s case, to work. They go no further. No extra-curriculars for the kids, no book clubs for Esme, no game nights for Carlisle. They walk parallel to humans, not among us.

In addition to this they're obscenely rich, which puts them another thousand miles from the experiences of your average American. They won't deal with the health system, which means healthcare is a non-issue, they're not going to need welfare or other social programs, unemployment is another non-issue. Name your issue, and the Cullens don't have personal stake in it. Even the climate crisis won't be a problem for them the way it will for us.

What I'm trying to say is, American political issues are a concept to them, not a lived reality. Just like they are for me. So hey, you made a great choice of blog to ask.

I'll also add here that you say the Volturi are too old to care, and I agree- from an ancient's point of view, racism is a matter of "which ethnicity are we hating today?", and it all looks rather arbitrary after a while. Same with every other issue - after a while it all just blends together into "what are the humans fighting over today? Which Christian denomination is the correct one? Huh. Good for them, I guess."

I can't put it any better than this post did, really. The Volturi are real people, humans are nerds and tumblr having Loki discourse. Aro thinks it's delightful and knows entirely too much about Watergate (and let's be real, Loki discourse as well), but the point I wanted to get at is that politics really don't matter to vampires.

And I don't think they matter to the Cullens either.

So, moving on to the next point while regretting I didn't put headlines in this post, I'll just state that I don't think vampires' minds are frozen. Their brains are unable to develop further, and they can never forget anything, but... well, this isn't the post for that, but in order for this to be true of vampires they would barely be sentient. They would not be able to process new impressions, to learn new things, nor to have an independent thought process. Yes, we see vampires in-universe (namely, Edward, who romanticizes himself and vampires) believe they're frozen and can never change, but there is no indication that this is a widespread belief, or even true. Quite the contrary - Carlisle went from a preacher's son who wanted to burn all the demons to living in Demon Capital for decades and then becoming a doctor and making a whole family of demons. Clearly, the guy has had a change in attitude over the years. Jasper, in his years as a newborn army general, slowly grew disenchanted with his life and developed depression. James initially meant to kill Victoria and hunted her across the earth, then became fascinated and changed his mind about it.

Had these people been incapable of change, Carlisle would still be hating demons, Jasper would be in Maria's army, and James would still be hunting Victoria.

It goes to follow, then, that they are able to adapt to new things.

The question is, would they?

Here I finally answer your question.

So, we have these people who don't really have any kind of stake in politics, who keep up to date all the same (or are forcibly kept up to date because high school) and are generally opinionated people.

Where do they then fall, politically?

(And this is where you might want to stop reading, anon, because I'm about to eviscerate these people.)

Alice votes for whoever's gonna win. She also makes a fortune off of betting each election. Trump's 1 to 10 victory in 2016 was a great day to be Alice. MAGA!

The actual policies involved are completely irrelevant, she does this because it's fun. Election means she gets to throw parties. Color coded parties for the Republican and Democratic primaries, and US-themed parties for Election Night! (Foreigner moment right here: I at first wrote "Election wake" before realizing that's not what y'all murricans call it.)

Alice loves politics. Doesn't know the issues, but she sure loves politics.

Bella votes Democrat. She actually knows about the issues, and cares about them. This girl is a Democrat through and through.

Carlisle doesn't vote. I can't imagine it feels right. Outside of faked papers he's not a US citizen, this is meddling in human affairs that he knows don't concern him.

More, this guy has never lived in a democracy.

In life, Carlisle lived under an absolute monarchy that, upon civil war, became an absolute theocracy. From there he learned that vampires live under a total dictatorship.

For the first 150 years of his life, democracy was that funky thing the Athenians did in history books thousands of years ago, no more relevant to him than the Ancient Egyptian monarchy is to me. Then the Americans, and later other European countries started doing this.

Good for them.

There's this mistake often made by those who view history from a... for lack of a better term, a solipsistic standpoint. A belief that the present day is the culmination of all of history. “My society is the best society, the most reasonable society; all the others had it backwards. Thank god we’re living in this enlightened age!”

The faith in our current system of government is one such belief. We (pardon me if this doesn’t apply to everybody reading this post) have grown up in democracies, being told this is the ultimate form of rule, and perhaps that is true - but remember the kings who have told their subjects they had were divine and the best possible ruler based on that. Remember also that most modern democracies haven’t actually been democracies for very long at all, America is the longest standing at some 230 years (not long at all in the grand scope of things) and they have a fracturing two-party system to show for it.

Every society, ever, has been told they’re the greatest, and their system of government the most just. Democracy is only the latest hit.

This is relevant to Carlisle because he’s immortal and decidedly not modern. Democracy has not been installed in him the way it was the rest of the Cullens, Jasper included. To him- well, it’s just not his world. He has no stakes in our human politics, and as he is older than every current democracy and has seen quite a few of them fall, he’s not going to internalize the democratic form of rule the way a modern human has.

I think the concept of voting is foreign to him.

It requires a level of participation in human society that he’s simply not at. He does the bare minimum to appear human so he do the work he loves, but nothing more, and I find that telling.

As it is I think he'd be iffy about his family doing it. He won’t stop them, but in voting they’re... well it’s kind of cheating. They’re not really citizens, none of this will affect them, and by voting they’re drowning out the votes of real human voters. He does not approve.

Edward votes Democrat. He's... well he’s the kind of guy who will oil a girl’s bedroom window so he can more easily watch her sleep without being discovered, justifying it to himself as being okay because if she were to tell him to get lost he’d stop immediately. Same guy is so sure that he’d leave and never return again if she wanted him to, except this is the man who returned to Forks to hang around his singer, knowing there was a significant chance he might kill her. To say nothing of his Madonna/Whore complex, or of the fact that he tried to pimp out his wife twice, and was willing to forcibly abort her child.

This guy is very much in love with chivalry, with being an enlightened and feminist man who supports and respects women, while not understanding the entire point of feminism, which is female liberation.

He votes Democrat because he’s such an enlightened feminist who cares about women’s rights.

Emmett doesn’t care to vote, but if he has to he votes Republican. The guy is from the 1930′s, and has major would-be-the-uncle-who-cracks-racist-jokes-if-he-was-older vibes.

Esme doesn’t vote, that would require getting out of the house.

More, I just... can’t see it. I can’t see her being one to read up on politics and The Issues, period, but if she has to then I doubt she’d be able to decide.

Jasper doesn’t vote. Alice can have her fun, he does not care.

There’s also the whole can of worms regarding the last time he went to bat for American politics.

I imagine he stays out of this.

Renesmée doesn't vote. She has no stock in the human affairs. Who would she vote for, on what grounds? When Bella tries to pull her to the urns, she points out that she's three years old.

Rosalie, guys, I’m sorry, but that girl is definitely gonna vote Republican. Perhaps not right now as it’s become the Trump party of insanity, but the Mitt Romney type of Republicans? Oh yes.

And for the record, yes I imagine she does vote. To step back from politics would be another way she was relinquishing her humanity, and that’s not allowed to happen. So, yes, she goes to the urns, less for the sake of the politics involved and more because like this, she’s still a part of society in some way.

Now, onto why I think she’s Republican, I think it’s both fiscal and social.

This girl was the daughter of a banker who somehow profited off of the Depression, and who then became part of a family with no material needs that would soon become billionaires thanks to Alice. Poverty to Rosalie is a non-issue, as it is I imagine she views it as a much lesser issue than what she’s had to deal with. The humans can pull themselves up by their bootstraps, Rosalie’s infertility is forever.

Rosalie’s empathy is strongest when she’s able to project onto others, and she won’t be able to project onto the less fortunate at all.

Then there’s the fact that the Republican party is all about traditional family values, and pro-life.

Rosalie, a woman from the 1930′s who idolizes her human life and who‘d love nothing more than to get to live out this fantasy, is down for that. And as of Breaking Dawn she’s vocally pro-life, so there’s that.

This all being said I don’t think Rosalie cares to sit down and fully understand these politics she’s voting for, the possible impact they’ll have- that’s not important. What’s important is what voting does for her.

TL;DR: I bet anon regrets asking.

[chaos-event-horizon]

Listen fuckface-- can I call you fuckface?-- anyway, fuckface, listen. I got something to tell you.

Number one that is literally what I fucking said on that post, so jot that down sweaty. He wanted to terminate because her fucking life was in danger. That is literally what I said. And him wanting that was reasonable as fuck and absolutely would have saved her life far more effectively than what actually happened in the book, because she never would have been in danger to begin with. He loved her enough that he didn't care about a nonliving clump of cells, and I will respect that any fucking day of the year, bitch. That's not "abortion propoganda", it's the goddamn truth.

Number two, I could not give less of a fuck what your opinion is. I had forgotten I'd even talked about that until 30 seconds ago when I saw this message and wondered what the fuck you were even on about. Get over yourself. There is no crusade against you and I do not care that your self-important ass hates civil rights.

I'm more annoyed than your whiny little ass can comprehend at the fact that you thought you were gonna come in here and bitch at me like I fucking did you dirty, when I don't even know who your bitchass is. You are nobody to me. You have no place in my space. You have the relevance of a fart across the street to me. And I know damn sure that given your personality that your lack of importance is eating you alive, so to top it off: blocked, so you can't even reply, motherfucker.

Girl, you ain't shit. Get off my property. Kiss my ass. Build a fuckin bridge and waltz your weak ass over it.

And to my followers, sorry you had to see that but I'm allowed to snap once a month and I decided to cash in.

[meloncubedradpops]

Repo! the Corona Opera: Part Two Fascist Boogaloo

Greetings fellow Repo! fans,

Here is my second installment of a series of three essays where I compare our contemporary times with the movie Repo! the Genetic Opera. My first piece detailed the similarities between the two worlds, and turns out, I have an awful lot to talk about still. I ended my last article by posing the question, "What went wrong in this dystopia to normalize the concept of death due to nonpayment?" No doubt, this movie is incredibly outrageous on many fronts, particularly within the dynamics of the Largo family. As mentioned in the previous piece, I highlighted the pervasiveness of GeneCo's power and influence towards the citizens in the city (is it called city of GeneCo? GeneCo-land? GenCity? An actual city in Italy??). 

People who write stories often bend the rules to make their story compelling. Be it exaggerating social interactions, creating scientifically impossible scenarios, or even allowing the characters to use technology that does not exist yet. I admit the creators of Repo! applied all those tactics and more, which makes the parallels I draw that much more surreal. I want to acknowledge this before I dive deeper because yes, I truly think it would be impossible to have a company who can offer cheap and dirty surgeries with an absence of debilitating class action lawsuits resulting from botched procedures, infection, or their body rejecting the organ transplant. And while I admit Zydrate does not exist, yet, but we do have a long history with opioid abuse. If you asked me when I first watched the movie if I think the Largo family could be a mirror of an ultra wealthy family from real life, I would have politely disagreed with you. But times right now are freaking weird. A single day does not go by where something completely outlandish is blasted all over the news, particularly in the United States. 

In my last essay I pointed out examples where the citizens in GenCity live a life after experiencing a mass extinction event. Besides the technological anachronisms, society and GeneCo have an uncomfortably close relationship with each other. GeneCo is not merely a corporation that offers healthcare and surgeries, it has an unyielding power politically too. I argue that GenCity is ran by a fascist government that is controlled and operated by GeneCo. 

If you're not a person who is super familiar with fascism, basically it's an extremist right wing government philosophy. I find it interesting that in the song "21st Century Cure", Graverobber says: Industrialization has crippled the globe. Although plagues, war, and other hardships existed before industrialization, that paradigm of change accelerated the imbalances between man and nature. Fascism did not exist until after World War I, after all. Between the world war itself and the Spanish Flu of 1918, there was a lot of pain and suffering felt all over the world. Fascists took advantage of vulnerable populations and asserted that their political party is the only correct party, and those who oppose are considered an enemy. Historically fascist governments have blurred the lines between the spheres of what's considered "public" and "private", and often danced harmoniously with business allies in pursuit of profit. As an effect, fascist governments have required citizens to foot the bill of a private company's losses. With enough propaganda, fascist governments will have you believing that this is ultimately for the betterment of everyone. And if you give them enough time, they will normalize terrible acts against humanity that barely make a peep, if the truth even comes to light. 

For the rest of this essay, I will be highlighting examples in the Repo! movie that correspond with characteristics of fascism, using political scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt's The 14 Characteristics Of Fascism, which was published in the spring 2003 issue of Free Inquiry magazine.

The 14 characteristics are:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism: Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays. 

The world surrounding GeneCo occupies itself with the concept that this incorporated area derives a sense of nationalism, in the absence of much dissent. If you see below, there is an advertisement on the top right corner that says, "Your Birthplace for a new Heredity". GeneCo is not just a company that sells organs and surgeries. It is its own incorporated city. This ad, combined with GeneCo's relentless messaging that not only did this company save humanity, you must conform to the idea that only GeneCo can provide you the experience of feeling clean, safe, and perfect.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

Being able to legally repossess someone's organs because they didn't make their organ payments is about as disdainful as you can get. Nathan has a whole song called "Legal Assassin", and there doesn't appear to be many laws that would at least have the pretense that these repossessions are remotely humane. There are multiple instances in the movie where Nathan approaches a client who is already restrained, panicked, and powerless. From what I can gather from the media in Gencity, GeneCo proliferates the idea that the company would be dysfunctional if people could get financed surgeries and let those payments go to collections. When you're a mega corporation, they let you do it.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause: The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

While the career of a Graverobber is certainly creepy and macabre, the idea that they could be executed without a jury of their peers is especially strange. After I created my last essay, my friend Veronica pointed out, that per "A Needle Into A Bug", one of the deleted scenes from the movie, that street zydrate is not actually derived from the brains of dead people. He extracts zydrate from bugs that nest inside the craniums of dead people, which in my opinion is a huge distinction. So who is he really stealing from? Is it morally okay to dig up a corpse to get drug goo to sell to junkies? Absolutely not, and the idea is incredibly disrespectful for the dead. And while I am sure there are graverobbers in this world that likely steal things like jewelry from corpses, I still wouldn't justify being executed extrajudicially. 

Further, Graverobber's relationship with the Largo family has me believing even more that GeneCo needs them more than their media campaign can justify. Rotti has access to incredible surveillance of the city, so you would think he would eliminate anyone who enabled Amber Sweet's addiction. My theory is GeneCo knows that street zydrate may result in more surgery sales. However they want to continue making money selling the lab-grown stuff. So the end justifies the means, if we can associate graverobbers and those who use street zydrate as criminals, we can continue believing that "they" are the enemies setting everyone else back.

4. Supremacy of the Military: Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized. AND 12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment: Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

GeneCo employs a private police force to carry out law enforcement. They patrol around a graveyard, a quasi-public space carved out for those who mourn. And because there is pervasive video surveillance, Rotti can demand that they do his bidding at any time. An example is his order to murder the repo man. We aren't aware of any sort of involvement beyond the borders of GenCity, but even the concept of a graveyard being a warzone is a special kind of hell. 

5. Rampant Sexism- The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.

Genterns! On the surface, it’s pretty cool that there is a large volume of female medical professionals who are skilled enough to carry out surgeries. However behind the sexy veneer is the reality that Genterns are not set up for success. They are not provided adequate PPE and work under non-sterile conditions. In the "Mark it Up" scene, one is killed by Luigi. Imagine going to medical school for years and years, only to be tasked with the job of organ warehouse worker. Then on one of your shifts you are stabbed to death because the CEO's son bumped into you while you were working. Not only that, but you are also expected to dress proactively for the purpose of selling the GeneCo product and experience.  

6. Controlled Mass Media: Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common. GeneCo has a monopoly on the media of the city. Politics, entertainment, healthcare, you name it, they have a direct stake in, and control over, the media. We do see from time-to-time tabloid clippings of the Largo family. But generally speaking, GeneCo puts a lot of effort in upholding their image. The best evidence is Blind Mag's story. She is a singer who acquired the ability to see after a GeneCo cornea surgery. And while she clocked into work day in and day out, singing and advertising for GeneCo for 17+ years, her departure resulted in Rotti murdering her. But why? Was he afraid of the things she would say? Rotti knew he was terminally ill when she declared her resignation, and yet killing her on stage is somehow less of a scandal?

7. Obsession with National Security: Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses. Fascist countries use fear as a tactic to keep the masses scared and compliant. The universe of Repo! is one filled with tragedy. Millions of people have died. I would imagine that the series of events that would lead to the creation and success of GeneCo was contingent upon people being scared for their lives. While dealing with the coronavirus, I find myself constantly checking my temperature, keeping my distance from people, and wearing a mask out in public. The human spirit is resilient, which is how we have survived so long. However sociopaths smell our fear and use it against us. The city of GeneCo is surrounded by plots upon plots of graveyards, signifying the carnage left after their public health crisis. I have a strong feeling that GeneCo was able to harness the threat of whatever caused the massive organ failure epidemic and as an effect created a power vacuum. 

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined: Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

This one is going to be a reach, particularly because there is an absence of religion in this story. I don't think religion would be on the creator's of Repo!'s purview, and honestly I don't blame them. If you look at the imagery of the story, however, it is very gothic. We have no idea if religion survives, and if it does, to what extent. I would imagine that people still have spiritual needs, and I argue that the GeneCo Opera is an example of how they get that fulfilled. 

"If you want it, baby, GeneCo's got it"

The GeneCo opera is not your typical opera experience. GeneCo specifically tells their customers to "testify". People are singing in unison, praising GeneCo. Clearly GeneCo has taken several human rituals and blended them together to create an over-the-top entertainment experience that seeks to advertise their company behind the testimonials of its patrons. The benefits of the opera for GeneCo, as a fascist entity, are two-fold: have people associate their most nirvana moments with an experience only GeneCo can offer (zydrate and surgery), and distract them with religious-like concerts so they won't question their neighbors being murdered on the streets by that very same company. 

9. Corporate Power is Protected: The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite. AND 13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption: Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

Throughout the entire movie, the Largo family is front and center. We know Rotti is terminally ill, and he utilizes his final moments to tie up loose ends in his life. His children feel entitled to his estate and the company of GeneCo. At no point do we see Rotti consult with a board of directors at GeneCo, a private fiduciary firm, or with any government entity. I would describe the company of GeneCo to be a weird combination of an aristocracy, government body, and corporation. His children commit crimes with no recourse or justice. Rotti kills the doctor who tells him he's dying. Luigi kills multiple people throughout the movie. In one of the opening scenes, we see a photograph showing Pavi is cutting off a woman's face. In the credits we see Amber's body guards lying dead on the floor during her press statement. What sort of corruption took place to make these occurrences so prevalent and normalized? 

10. Labor Power is Suppressed: Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

We aren't super privy to the machinations that make this city functional. But there is a clear stratification that has sustained itself long enough that healthcare is not a right in this city, and those who can't pay for necessary healthcare can finance it. In a just society, if we have the means to save humanity, we can figure out a way to pay for it. Be it taxes on the most wealthy or other cost-saving measures, if there is a will, there is a way. However if you give a company enough power and money, it will do everything it can to stay on top. The best examples I can think of would be Nathan and Blind Mag's tenuous career at GeneCo. Neither really wanted the job they were given, but they were forced into those positions by Rotti. Had Bling Mag belonged to a entertainment union, would she have had more protections? Would a proper investigation into the murder of Marni result in justice being served, and the opportunity for Nathan to live a better adjusted life? Rotti masterfully manipulates situations that create powerless outcomes for his employees.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals: Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts We don't see any particular evidence that GeneCo is currently hostile to higher education or academia. What we do know is the technologies of this world are akin to something we'd see out of the 20th century. However GeneCo is advanced enough to synthesize usable organs.  In my last essay, I drew parallels to today by highlighting that there may have been a "brain drain" of intellectualism as a result of academics dying from their public health crisis. Outside of the opera house, we don't see many examples of art in this world. Maybe this is what happens when a government stops funding programs it deems frivolous or challenges the status quo?

14. Fraudulent Elections: Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

Based off context clues in the movie, we know that there is a group of voting citizens who help determine whether or not a company can repossess financed organs that are passed due on their payments. We don't know who makes these votes, the election process, or anything like that. So it is hard to say if GeneCo goes beyond their media campaign convincing voters to keep repossessions legal. Despite this lack of knowledge, I would argue that GeneCo wields incredible power regarding the course of elections for laws that apply to them. Okay, you want to pass a law to make organ repossession illegal? Fine, we don't have to offer products on a payment plan. The very threat of being able to take away healthcare is something right wing governments loveeee doing. 

Speaking of elections, the United States 2020 general election is approaching. Now that I argued the ways that GeneCo is fascist, I will tie together ideas from both of these essays into a final piece that I hope you will like. If you enjoyed this article, please send it to all your Repo! friends.

[spiritualdirections]

More on the ethics of the covid vaccines

I’ve already written several posts about the ethics of taking the new covid vaccines. The question that people are asking is, to what degree do the various vaccines cooperate in the evil of the aborted cell lines that are commonly used to produce vaccines?

The Catholic doctrine about cooperation with evil is that, under certain conditions, it is permissible to benefit from or in some way be tied to someone else’s evil actions. It’s okay for the pope to have a Twitter account, even if Twitter supports abortion, because his cooperation in Twitter’s evil is remote, and the benefits outweigh the costs. It’s okay for your parish to have a Facebook page, even though Facebook supports anti-Catholic positions. It’s okay to have an Intel chip in your computers or smart devices (even though Intel supports abortion), or to use an internet provider or cell provider that also allows pornography to be passed along its network. Under certain conditions, that is. 

It’s not a secret that most of the tech industry supports (enthusiastically) positions that the Church considers evil. Basically, if you check your email, or stream anything, or use social media, or use the internet or cable, or have a smart phone--or read this post--you are cooperating with evil to a small degree. In this fallen world, it’s unrealistic for us not to cooperate with evil in any degree. 

But we should not do so unnecessarily. If we can avoid cooperating with evil at minimal cost, it’s morally required that we do so. So, for example, if we can stay at a hotel that doesn’t profit from pornography in its rooms, then we should choose that hotel, even if it isn’t as nice as one that profits from porn. If there were a cellular service that blocked all pornography on its network, we would be morally obligated to select that service over those that don’t block porn, even if the network is not as fast as the others. If there’s a less morally compromised option, we can be obligated to choose it.

That’s what the bishops of the US are emphasizing these days. The covid vaccine promises an end to the shutdowns and a restoration of civil society, including the regular reception of the sacraments and a return to normal parish life. That’s a great good. Of the vaccines that have already been medically tested and approved by the relevant scientific and governmental authorities, all involve some cooperation in the evil of abortion (and that’s not to mention that the companies developing the vaccines are involved in other evils, such as birth control). So there’s (currently) no way that the great good of ending the pandemic can be accomplished without some cooperation with evil. 

There are several vaccines that have been approved or are close to approval. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines do not contain any aborted cell lines in the vaccine itself. The AstraZeneca and Janssen vaccines do use aborted cell lines in the vaccines themselves. To use the latter two vaccines, then, is to cooperate more closely with the evil of the abortion from which the cell lines were taken. The first two vaccines are less convenient to use--they have to be kept at really cold temperatures--and therefore they might not be available everywhere or at the same price as the latter two. But since there is a choice, Catholics have an obligation to prefer the ones that cooperate less in the evil of abortion.

The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines do involve some cooperation in the evil of abortion. The companies did use an aborted cell line at a couple of points in the testing of the vaccine. That means that were a vaccine to become available that did not involve any cooperation in the evil of abortion, Catholics would be obligated to prefer that new vaccine, even if there were some disadvantages to doing so. There are reports that some vaccines in testing stages are less connected to abortion than the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines.

The US Council of Catholic Bishops has said that it is ethically permitted to use the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, because the cooperation with the evil of abortion would be “relatively remote”. Most bishops have issued their own statements to this effect. 

This is clearly the conclusion to which Catholic ethics leads. One is almost certainly cooperating more closely with abortion and other evils by using Gmail or WhatsApp on an iPhone on Verizon than by receiving the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. 

However, the point being made by some pro-life activists is that pro-lifers should hold out for a more ethically pure vaccine, because now is a pressure point. If we refuse even the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, we create a market for the better vaccines, and that will incentivize even more vaccine makers to stop using aborted cell lines. 

That argument has merit. And it’s probably true that there’s a greater chance of making a difference by boycotting a new product like the covid vaccine than it is to get Google to filter porn. Google would barely notice a boycott.

However, the prospects have to be weighed against the great good of ending the pandemic. Nobody can be sure that an ethically better vaccine will come to market soon. Does a small chance at making a small difference in case with a remote cooperation with evil outweigh the great good of an effective vaccine? The Church is loudly proclaiming that no one is required to come to that conclusion. It’s a prudential judgment, that includes weighing certain political and medical and economic factors, and then betting on a subset of possible outcomes. The Church isn’t forcing anyone into that bet. 

Nor is the Church forcing anyone into taking the vaccine. There might be good scientific reasons not to do that either. I heard two black DJs a while back talking about Melinda Gates’ suggestion that black people could be in the front of the line for the vaccine. She intended that as a symbol that #BlackLivesMatter, but the DJs were saying no thanks, we don’t want to be the guinea pigs with a new vaccine that was rushed to market, with unknown side effects. Let someone else go first. Catholics are permitted to think that as well. 

The Church is leaving the question of whether to take the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines up to the individual person. Some people will make an argument that every Catholic should get the vaccine, some will say that no Catholic should get it. Those will not be purely doctrinal arguments, but rather will be mixed in with a bunch of other considerations. That’s fine. Advocates are right to make the best public arguments for their prudential views, and to make arguments about why other views are wrong. However, the Church does not have competence to make judgments about the likely effectiveness of future vaccines, or to make predictions about political or economic outcomes. So it’s right that the Church leaders simply speak to the ethics of the options before us.

[chaplainamerica316us]

                           SO

                By Whocares? In 2021

 I told the Democratic Party about the tragedy in New York were over 8000 patients died at the hands of an incompetent, arrogant, prideful, egotistical governor, over 8000 families lost loved ones then I looked at all of them and asked,

“How would you feel if that were you who had lost someone you love?”

And to my shocking surprise their answer was, “So”

I told a man about the millions of abortions throughout the world and his response was, “So”

I told a woman about the dangers of the Covid19 vaccine in that this vaccine comes with real short and long-term side effects and her response was, “So”

I explained to a young man about the horrors that are now happening in American healthcare and his response was, “So”

I told a couple about the millions of patients in American healthcare who have been placed in isolation on 24 hour lockdown confined in their rooms without having any visits from their loved ones for over a year now, they looked at each other and then said, “So”

I told a group of high school students about the importance of knowing what their civil rights are and what their civil liberties are and the importance of learning how to defend them and in knowing how to exercise them and the importance of teaching them to others to keep our nation free and strong and their response was, “So”

So let me get this straight one day you all wake up to the reality that all of your rights and freedoms have been taken away from you and you or someone you love has now become a slave to American healthcare and on that day you look back and regret all the “so whats.” You’ve ever said.

And you will find yourselves one day having become enslaved by the politicians and corporations that have taken your rights and freedoms away from you in exchange for comfort and safety and you will find yourselves being ruled by a government that deems you as being two irresponsible in choosing right from wrong, they have stripped your rights and freedoms away from you so they can have complete power and control over your life. Oh sure they'll give you safety and a certain measure of comfort but you will not be free you'll be watched, controlled and programmed into serving your political and corporate masters who now own you.   

WAKE UP PEOPLE THE CLOCK IS TICKING……………………………………….

[indebetou-ghost]

I don’t know how I feel about this, but it’s my first attempt at anything involving actual TMA characters, so we all have to start somewhere. (That Lonely Eyes is coming soon)

          86 – Jonmartin – I’ll Walk You Home

       The Institute was quiet, save for the soft squishing noises that accompanied Jon’s every step. It sounded like his shoes were full of water, like he was stepping in mud, but no; that wet noise came from the hundreds of dead worms littering the floor of the institute- the rooms and the halls alike- that Jon was trying very hard to avoid stepping in, but one simply can’t accommodate for the worm-to-floor ratio when moving. It would involve copious amounts of tiptoeing, and though the Institute was mostly empty, he didn’t quite want to lower himself to that.

       It was definitely past closing hours, and Jon told Elias that he would go home just to get the man off his back, but in reality he didn’t really want to leave. The Institute felt like it was in safety limbo, as it were. It shouldn’t have felt safe, given that at any moment, any worm could slither back to life and deign to embed itself into Jon’s flesh like the rest of its kin seemed to enjoy doing. The Institute was full of worm corpses. It shouldn’t be safe, and yet-

       Yet it felt like the only safe place in the world, purely on virtue of surviving the whole ordeal. If the Institute could fortify itself against an eldritch horror of worm-like proportions than surely it could hold its own against any threat. Jon felt like his home just didn’t have that same quality. Sure, it was worm-free, always had been, but… it didn’t have the same warding atmosphere the Institute had. The Institute felt ominous on the best of days, but it also felt enveloping, beckoning. Nowhere else in the world felt like that right now.

       Still. Elias would have his head if he stayed in the Archives, so Jon made to leave.

       And on a stairwell that was remarkably free from worms, he saw Martin Blackwood.

       He looked about as tired as Jon felt, and the effect of exhaustion seemed to make the man physically droop. Shoulders slouched, slightly curled in on himself, even his hair, which was generally comprised of bouncy golden curls, was almost wilting. The day had taken a toll on everyone, after all. Jon was sure he looked a lot worse.

       “Hi, Jon,” Martin said, a few steps up. Jon had to crane his neck to look him in the face. “You heading home too?”

       “I… suppose I am, yes.” He replied. He climbed a few steps, and when he was level with Martin, the two of them wordlessly began walking together. It was more a solidarity thing than anything else, Jon reasoned. The loyalty of co-workers, monster-based trauma notwithstanding. Corridors passed, and the worms gradually started becoming more and more scarce. The silence became the air, and the air became silent, until Martin Blackwood seized the opportunity to break it.

       “This’ll be the first time I’ll be in my flat again since the whole Prentiss thing started.” He mused, voice rising above the silence. Jon probably should have spent less time thinking about the fact that words had been said, and more time thinking about the words, because by the time he responded, it was a beat too late for it to feel natural.

       “Oh, I suppose that’ll be… nice.” Oh, very eloquent. It was the exhaustion, and the will to be polite. He didn’t think either of them had the energy to be anything but civil right now, anyway, but Martin continued talking as if Jon had said something worth responding to.

       “I guess. It’s been more than a month. It’ll probably be dusty. God know what state my houseplants’ll be in.”

       “Better dusty than wormy.” Jon said, mostly without thinking. Martin actually huffed out a chuckle at that.

       “I’m pretty sure I’d prefer anything to the worms right now. I’d take spiders any day of the week.”

       “I think I’d settle for the worms out of those two options, actually.”

       “Spiders aren’t everyone’s cup of tea,” Martin smiled. The smile was quickly followed by a sigh, and the Institute door was in view. “Sometimes I think I see worms out of the corner of my eyes, you know? Even when it’s just light moving, or a cigarette butt on the footpath, or… just a bit of dust on the wind. At least now we know they’re all gone. Well, most of them are gone. Some could still be wriggling around, heaven forbid.”

       Jon hummed in affirmation, a quiet yes, and they were out into the night air. A far different chill to the bone-deep cold of the institute. At the end of their walk side by side, Martin turned to face Jon.

       “Right, well, safe home, Jon. Have a good night.”

       “Wait, Martin,” Jon found himself saying, and Martin took an aborted step forward before turning back to Jon.

       “What is it?”

       God, this was stupid.

       “Would you- that is, if you don’t mind, ah- can I walk you home?”

       Jon could feel the surprise radiating off Martin, and quickly backpedalled. “I-if you don’t want me to that’s fine, but, see, the thing is, after the worms I don’t think I-” Jon sighed and restarted mentally, went back, rewrote the sentence in his head. “I’d prefer not to walk alone, for a while. Just until I’m… far enough away from the institute. Is that alright?”

       Jon really didn’t expect Martin’s look of surprise to change into something more pleased, but he smiled something far too warm and happy to have come from today, and he nodded. “That’s- It’d be more than alright. I’d be glad for the company.”

       They walked.

       It was mostly companionable silence for the first few minutes, while Jon was trying to get his bearings on how, exactly, to actually start a conversation with Martin. They walked between lampposts, the sections of dark between the radius of light the zones of slight tension, the place where the hairs on the back of Jon’s neck stood up, but then Martin would smile at him, and the sudden surge of fear would dissipate.

       “So,” Martin eventually said, “How’re, the, uh, worm wounds? I mean, I assume they’re bad but… are you alright, is what I’m trying to say.”

       Jon could snap back at him, tell him that of course he wasn’t alright, that it was an idiotic question to ask, but… he doesn’t. He bites back a cruel comment, because Martin means well. He’s trying. It’s just conversation.

       “They hurt. But I’ll be fine. I’ll survive.” His answer is succinct and maybe a little sharp (he’ll blame that on the exhaustion) but Martin seems satisfied with it. After a beat, he adds to it. “I’m glad you’re mostly unscathed.”

       “So am I,” Martin says, and then his step falters for a second before he falls back into the same rhythm as Jon.” “Sorry, thought I saw something… moving. Probably nothing.”

       “Probably just a stray piece of string.” Jon says. “Or some particularly mobile dirt.”

       Martin chuckles at that. “Is it a worm, or is it some volatile debris? Place your bets!”

       Jon huffs amusedly in place of laughter, and shoots back, “That piece of plastic looks very like a worm, I think we’d better investigate to be sure.”

       “Be careful, that empty can could be full of them, lurking, waiting.”

       They laugh as they go on, and Jon finds it completely surreal. The sheer amount of stress he’s been through today seems to have come full circle, as now it feels just completely foreign. Hours ago, he decided that he couldn’t trust a soul in the Institute, but here he is now, not twenty four hours after being ravaged by flesh-eating worms, laughing with his equally traumatised co-worker about said worms. He thinks, if you don’t laugh you’ll cry, and that’s exactly the philosophy his tired mind latches onto, because every second spent with Martin is a second he doesn’t need to think about how he could have died today, or about the murder of Gertrude Robinson, or about the hold, the pressure he can feel exerted upon him by the Institute at large. He knows there’s something larger at play, some greater web he’s in the centre of, but at this very moment there is only him, Martin, and the ever-living traffic of London. It’s almost enough to forget about the holes in his skin and the gaps in his knowledge.

       Almost.

       “Watch out, that one looks very worm-like,” Martin starts, jovial, until he squints at the creature and stops. “Actually, I think that is a worm.”

       Jon stops too, and Martin’s right: it is a worm. A normal, pink worm, twisting and writhing on the footpath. “It is most definitely a worm.”

       They exchange glances, and look at the worm, and at each other.

       They cross the road just in case.

       The conversation fades after that, but the night is so filled with the sounds of London that Jon doesn’t really mind. There’s never a silent note to coax unpleasant thoughts from his head and that’s all he could ask for. Walking with Martin is… nice. It’s nice.

       They’re at Martin’s flat too soon, and suddenly there’s distance between them, and Martin’s walking up the stairs and Jon has to crane his neck to see his face again. He’s smiling, and looking so fondly that Jon can’t help but wonder if it’s actually directed at him.

       “Well, this is me. Thanks for walking with me, Jon. I think it did a lot of good.”

       “I… think so too. Thank you, Martin.”

       Before he finished his ascent to his building, Martin stopped and looked pensive for a second before descending the stairs again, and standing level with Jon once more. Quickly, and a little hesitantly, unsure, Martin pulled Jon into a hug, and Jon barely got to register the sensation before it was gone again. Martin was warm. He smelled faintly of lavender, and a little bit like tea bags.

       “Stay safe, Jon. Be careful on your way home.”

       “I will. Thank you.”

       Martin Blackwood disappeared into the darkness of the apartment building, and Jon made his way home. His mind was more at ease, and as he walked alone, the ghost of warmth around his body, he found that he wasn’t plagued by the worries of the past and the future. They were kept at bay for one blessed evening, and Jon thought that was enough.

It was more than enough.

[political-fluffle]

Every time a Republican is in the White House, women across the world face the devastating impact of the US's ban on discussing abortion in exchange for aid.

KATHMANDU, Nepal — On Wednesdays and Fridays, Shikha Sharma was banned from saying the word “abortion” out loud.

This makes things pretty tricky for her, because Sharma is the go-to person for everything young Nepalis want to know about sex but are too afraid to ask.

As the host of a popular late-night radio show, Sharma, 33, takes questions from across the country about consent, queerness, safe sex, sexual taboos, and social mores. Listeners of her show, Khuldulee.com — Curiosity.com in English — can call for free or send her questions via the show’s Facebook page. Sometimes they even track down her personal number for questions or to write messages that simply say, “thank you for your advice :)”

“The most common type of distress calls I get are from young people who’ve had unprotected sex,” said Sharma, who has hosted the show for 12 years. “They’re scared about getting pregnant but stop short of asking where and how to get an abortion, because most of them aren’t aware that there are free abortion clinics in Nepal.”

Sharma’s job became particularly difficult in 2017, when her station bosses first told her that, for two days a week, she wasn’t allowed to say the word, let alone discuss, abortion.

The reason? Donald Trump — and the Republican Party.

That’s because, shortly after Trump was elected, he activated the “global gag rule” (GGR), banning US funding of foreign NGOs that provide abortion counseling or referrals. For a country like Nepal, where the health care sector relies heavily on US aid, the effects were always going to be catastrophic for women’s health, but no one was quite sure just how bad things would get. (...)

In one of his first acts in office, Trump sat triumphant — in a room full of men — and signed the executive order that reinstated the policy, marking a break from the Obama years. Two years later, having renamed the Mexico City policy to the friendlier-sounding Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance, he went further than any Republican president before him. Under Trump’s expanded policy, which NGOs scrambled to understand the implications of, foreign NGOs that receive aid from the US could no longer even use their own, non-US funds to refer patients to places that provide safe abortions. In fact, if they even mention abortion as part of their counseling or education programs, they and any other local health care organizations they might support could lose their funds too. The expanded rule has closed off entire networks of grassroots health workers — who need aid money the most — from doing abortion-related counseling, effectively choking off smaller civil society efforts that wish to help women but lack the resources and funds to do so. (...)

Since 2017, experts fearing the worst issued warnings about the repercussions of Trump’s expanded policy, but had no way to assess the impact on the ground. Now, a collaboration between BuzzFeed News and the Kathmandu Post has found that everything rights groups feared as a result of the expanded GGR is unfolding in real time. In Nepal, where one-third of the country’s GDP comes from remittances, curtailed USAID funding has led to staff reductions and the closure of clinics, and women and men have lost access to conversations about consent, contraception, and HIV. The most common health complaints brought to gynecologists by women — prolapsed uteruses and other abortion-related complications — are directly related to the information vacuum created as a result of the gag. (...)

Republicans in the US frequently describe the GGR as protecting unborn children. The evidence suggests otherwise. The policy targets abortion only very narrowly — forcing women to carry unwanted pregnancies has far-ranging effects that go beyond this stated aim.

Multiple studies now indicate that abortion bans do not bring down the number of abortions — instead, they endanger the lives of women who need those abortions in the first place, by forcing them to seek dangerous alternatives. The studies show the GGR endangers the lives of newborns and their parents, by denying them lifesaving education about safe sex, maternal care, cancer screenings, and HIV transmission. (...)

For years, nonprofit organizations that were funded by USAID trained entire fleets of doctors, nurses, and government officers in destigmatizing sex, sexuality, and sexually transmitted diseases, handling cases of sexual assault with sensitivity and care, discouraging age-old — and frequently lethal — superstitions about women’s menstrual cycles, educating families about women’s rights to study and work and to have a life beyond making babies. Now, Trump and his policy have begun to undo all of that work. (...)

[mobius-prime]

34. Special - Sonic & Knuckles

Previous / Table of Contents / Next

Is everyone ready for the Kenders-est issue yet? Not only did he have a hand in writing every story in this special, but he did the pencils for one of the stories for the first time. He's back to writing about his favorite character in the universe, Knuckles, and for the first time we're gonna be getting some backstory for him.

The issue begins with another intro page, characteristic of Penders-headed stories, which gives us a little more info on this canon's version of the Floating Island (not yet referred to as Angel Island). As mentioned before, the island is held aloft not by the Master Emerald but by a Chaos Emerald. The island is mentioned to be one of the very last places on Mobius to be untouched by the war raging below on the surface. The page also mentions that Knuckles' role as the island's guardian is passed down from generation to generation, a claim that I don't recall any other canons ever making (the games just refer to him as having this role with no knowledge of how he ended up with it), a detail which will be expanded upon later on, thanks to Kenders' neverending obsession with the echidnas.

Panic in the Sky!

Writers: Mike Kanterovich and Ken Penders Pencils: Art Mawhinney and Dave Manak Colors: Barry Grossman

The Floating Island, which apparently has always floated somewhere on the other side of the ocean, has started flying wildly off course, terrifying local Mobians and alerting the Freedom Fighters. No one has apparently ever heard of this thing before, but it's headed for Knothole, and considering all other massive things that head for Knothole tend to be deadly, that's not a good sign.

Of course, Sonic and Tails recognize this thing from their excursion onto it not that long ago, and fill everyone in, though why they didn't tell everyone all about their adventure and entanglement with Knuckles before now is beyond me (well, I know logically why - they needed an excuse to recap for the readers). Sonic and Tails decide to fly in to investigate, and thus we have our first showcase of Antoine being an accomplished pilot, which essentially makes half the entire cast pilots at this point. Also, the Floating Island has machine guns now!

Antoine flies them above the horizon line and out of danger, and they airdrop in only to immediately be attacked by several different bots, which the story is very unclear on whether they are from Robotnik or like, automated defense systems for the island or something. Sonic ends up going tumbling off a cliff, only for Knuckles to make his appearance and immediately try to murder him by stepping on his hand. What the hell, Knuckles?

Luckily, Tails is there to distract him, and after some brief fighting, Sonic is able to stop Knuckles from swinging his fists long enough to point out that the island has flown wildly off course, and that Knuckles is basically being a giant reactionary idiot. Seriously, Knuckles, how the hell did you somehow not notice your entire island being retrofitted into a giant fortress despite being its guardian? Talk about not doing your job.

Knuckles leads Sonic and Tails to the Chaos Chamber, where the Chaos Emerald sits. Interestingly, unlike the games where the Master Emerald need merely sit on the island to magically provide the lift to make it float, in the comics the Chaos Emerald actually provides literal power to a system that allows the island to defy gravity. However, an energy siphon has been installed to draw power towards Robotnik's guns and engines instead, so he can use the island as a method of obliterating Knothole. Again, despite being the island's guardian, Knuckles somehow noticed none of this. Robotnik's face appears and explains his plan to them over a screen, and then he makes an absolutely incredible facial expression on a backdrop of the ashes of civilization.

He doesn't even look like he's evilly laughing, he looks like he's taking an extremely painful dump or something. What the hell happened here, pencillers?

Anyway, Knuckles, ashamed by his failure, takes the emerald and shatters it, removing both Robotnik's power source and the source of the power keeping the island afloat. Robotnik chooses to abort rather than fall with it, thinking that he may still win the day after all.

I have to halt everything for a moment to discuss his claim right here, that the island is eight miles high. Now perhaps this is just a reference to the song Eight Miles High (I wasn't aware of it before now, but it popped up a lot while I was Googling information for this), but let's take him at his word and assume that the Floating Island really does hover at an altitude of eight miles (that's about thirteen kilometers for my non-American readers). That's approximately 42,000 feet in the air, which is the absolute maximum limit for modern commercial aircraft before the engines are no longer able to maintain lift. At that altitude, our planet's atmosphere is far too thin to breathe, and most people will suffer from hypoxia within seconds, and probably suffocate within a few minutes at most (for reference, Mt. Everest's peak is 29,000 feet above sea level, and even trained and prepared mountain climbers have to bring bottled oxygen and are at great risk of hypoxia and death at that kind of altitude). Now if we assume that Mobians have similar oxygen requirements to humans, and that Mobius' atmospheric conditions are similar to Earth's (two assumptions that are reasonable to make as later issues will reveal), absolutely no life should even exist on the Floating Island at all. Sonic and Tails would have suffocated within seconds of ever setting foot on it, and Knuckles wouldn't even be alive to watch them die, let alone attack them.

But whatever, it's a comic. We are dealing with a world where portals to alternate universes open and close on the regular, after all. Knuckles, once he's sure that Robotnik is gone, pulls out… another Chaos Emerald! Turns out he simply made a switch with a fake to fool Robotnik and then destroyed the fake, and thus replaces the real, unharmed emerald to halt the island's descent. Another quick bit of math - if we assume that the island's terminal velocity takes a little longer to reach than a human's (I have no idea how to calculate how fast something of that much mass would be able to fall, so I'm working on a lot of assumptions here) then we can say it would probably have taken nearly three and a half minutes to crash to earth had it been allowed to fall, yet the next panel shows it halting at what seems like a mere few hundred feet above the village - again, probably just for the dramatic effect, but I find it amusing that Knuckles might have waited almost three minutes playing chicken with Robotnik until he bailed, before replacing the real emerald.

With the day saved, Knuckles rejects Sonic's offer to join the Freedom Fighters, because he needs to pretend to be a lone wolf for a little while longer. Sonic and Tails return to tell the others what happened, and wonder what Knuckles will do in the future…

Fire Drill

Writer/Pencils: Ken Penders Colors: Freddy Mendez

…luckily, we don't need to wait long to find out, because every story in this issue is about Knuckles! This is the first story penciled by Penders himself, which is noteworthy, especially as he becomes a more frequent artist in later issues. Also to note is that Barry Grossman no longer has a monopoly on the coloring - we finally have someone new for the first time since the third freaking issue! Welcome to the party, Freddy!

While there's not a lot of plot to this story, it does contain some interesting tidbits. Knuckles is chilling on his island as normal, when a loud explosion startles him. He traces the explosion from the beach and follows footprints into the Sandopolis Zone ruins, believing the troublemaker to be Sonic and ready to throw hands once more. He faces several traps within the ruins, such as falling rocks, a tripwire-activated axe, and a sand trap, but things don't really get interesting until these few panels:

He mentions family for the first time - a father - which not even the games hint at. The way he speaks, we can assume his father hasn't been around for some time. However, this seems to follow what the intro page said about this duty being passed on between generations - clearly, his father was a guardian before him, but for whatever reason, he and the rest of the echidnas have disappeared…

Anyway, after facing a few more traps and trials, Knuckles emerges from the ruins to find that the footprints seem to lead off the edge of the island, and assumes that Sonic has had his fun and vacated the island. However, we the readers can see that that's not the case - a mysterious silhouette is the real troublemaker, and apparently, they were the one testing Knuckles… but why?

Lord of the Floating Island

Writer: Ken Penders Pencils: Harvey Mercadoocasio Colors: Freddy Mendez

This is really just a plot meant to establish what exactly Knuckles tends to do on an average day on his island. Knuckles is flying around - because he can just do that in the comics, I know he can usually glide in other media but he just straight up flies here - when the wind buffets him around and he spots a young kangaroo hopping around in fear. Unlike in other canons, the Floating Island is actually quite populated - Knuckles isn't alone there but acts as guardian of not only the Chaos Emerald, but all the island's Mobian inhabitants. He swoops down to pick the kangaroo up to protect it, and while they wait out the storm they spot what's causing it - a solar eclipse, because that's how eclipses work.

Interestingly, Knuckles refers to "the moon" rather than "one of the moons." I can't remember at this point whether Mobius having one hundred moons was retconned in later issues, but either this issue acts as the retcon, or else Knuckles is merely referring to only one moon that regularly causes the eclipse or something. In addition, we get to see the first appearance of the dingoes, which become regulars in later issues but for now are treated like some kind of mindless stampeding mob, despite them clearly being Mobians as well with shoes and gloves.

Anyway, in the end, the eclipse ends, the winds die down, and the kangaroo's mother finds him again, thanking Knuckles for his role as guardian. It really kind of acts like he's a one-man police force for the entire island, which I suppose isn't entirely inaccurate for this canon.

[josiemaxinegallows]

LIFE BEGINS AT CUM Sermon #1 of the SUNDAY SATANISM series by Josie M. Gallows

Life begins at cum. Cum doesn’t have a heartbeat but it can travel. Cum is alive. When a cumshot is killed we call it “spermicide.” When an egg dies that’s called “ovicide.”

The abortion debate is a moral stopwatch. When is life alive? Choose your philosophy. The intrepid sperm is alive. The egg, also. Both have potential to become Bible believing patriots. Inshallah. Certain extremists take these factoids deadly serious. The anti-masturbators of the past are the great-grandpappies of today’s anti-abortion sharia.

Zygotes and blastocysts are living. But they’re unthinking. Devoid of personality. No stake in the world of human affairs. No history, with thousands of man hours invested. Unlike the mother, the fetus is alive but has no life that can be halted, delayed, or destroyed. Nobody relies on the unwanted fetus. The fetal heartbeat can’t be heartbroken. It knows nothing about itself. The fetus is the most innocent thing in all the world, because it’s a non-person.

Pregnancy effects the woman more than abortion effects the unborn. Abortion isn’t a care free decision but the scales have been miscalibrated. Intentionally.

It’s political theater. The Christians who rule value the cumshot more than the woman. They legitimize their rule by appealing to ignorant sentimentality. Observe the very same men, and their dutiful wives, dispassionate towards every other example of innocent life. It’s assured these men are unsympathetic to strange fetuses. They bother because of theater, simple and plain. Their own misogynistic superstition plays a role, and takes its toll, but whatever the motivation, the damage is the same.

Dysfunctional Christian strongholds such as Georgia and Alabama are threatening the state’s violence against women who might need an abortion. I’m sure, the Mega Churches blame loose moral values for the “murder of babies.” They indict everything but Christianity for the sorry state of family values. But they don’t get off the hook. Christianity is the loose moral value.

The state of family life is botched by religions like Christianity. The church is why the proletariat struggles to find its footing. Place your hopes and your values in the unreal and a barren harvest is a sure thing. The Satanic Age can’t be faulted. The church can be blamed for Girls Gone Stupid. I blame the peer pressure of good Christian morality for every teenage girl who stunts her future by the wretchedly sentimental act of becoming a teen mom, in this day and age; if she has any choice. Chances are, she doesn’t have a choice. I don’t blame sexual promiscuity.

Without the church, abortion and dysfunction wouldn’t occur at the rate they do. If the Satanic Age, an age of meaningful liberty, were allowed to flourish and take its final shape – and sooner rather than later, it will – only the most necessary of abortions would take place. Anton LaVey himself commented on this in Satan Speaks!, where he suggested compulsory sterilization. Read for yourself, The Third Side: The Uncomfortable Alternative, pages 30-31. With everything we’ve learned since then, perhaps it’s time to elaborate.

The Christian types have resisted, corrupted, or destroyed efforts to create a more responsible public, better fit for parenting and less likely to abort. The Christian resists education as a natural predator, because it challenges the primacy of The Holy Bible as the sole source of public wisdom. But it’s sexual education he truly rails against. Private neurosis becomes a civilization wide crisis.

As much as possible, the public’s kept in the dark about their own bodies, practically bereft of deeper knowledge about birth control and relationships. Resistance is met with an unhinged freak-out, each and every time. Ignorance, not family, is the public institution.

Forthcoming generations will be deprived of choice through sheer ignorance. The mutation is already taking hold. What good is a public, today, where only the therapist and the educator are compelled to learn about child psychology and child education? This is a profound loss to the species because Mega Church Christians are hysterical, in need of a 72-hour psych hold, that gays might be included, that women wouldn’t be beasts of burden by default. The unreality of porn is the greatest source of sex ed for boys. Good going, Jesus.

There is a gaping hole where adult values have been effectively sledge hammered out of the wall between order and chaos. The most basic of instruction is morally troubled. The young won’t learn the folkways and traditions that made life effective in the old world. The third world can do more with less. The western kiddo is deprived, because the girl might be oppressed and the boy might be sissified by wearing an apron. They aren’t taught to cook, clean, build, organize, mend, hunt, or study for anything but a standardized test. They don’t learn to grow, preserve, take inventory, or balance an account. They certainly won’t learn to be effective parents, parents on purpose, able to delegate roles, and capable of discipline without abuse. Their own parents won’t be around to teach these things in full because, thanks to Protestant austerity, both parents are entrenched in the workforce. Seeing as the churches on every street corner don’t pay their taxes, to subsidize the results of their own fuck-up failures, it wouldn’t be affordable to institute these solutions anyway. Let me make it Satanically clear, the zygote has little to look forward to.

Let’s no longer pretend Christian hyperbole isn’t to blame, please and thank you. It’s time to skewer the bastards. They’ve had US Surgeon Generals fired in disgrace for trying to turn the tide. It’s not hypothetical. Our botched republics are at least one part theocracy, right now. Each of us have a vested interest in dismantling Christendom.

The Christian man can’t get a clue. After millennia of accrued evidence that hormones are stronger than scripture, he persists in his delusional pipe-dream that abstinence will save the soul of the nation. Of the 2 billion odd Christians, the majority of them are Catholic. The Catholic is well known to teach the poor, destitute, or insane, to forego contraceptives. The missionaries of Christ are plague rats who journey to regions frequented by famine, drought, and genocide. In their wake, they leave behind the building blocks of ignorance. Be fruitful and multiply, and should the babes die of dehydration, God bless. If abortion is murder, are missionaries enacting crimes against humanity? If we’re talking results, let’s talk negligent manslaughter. Can we try the Pope in Nuremberg? Every Mega Church pastor, too? And why not? Lately, they love the idea of threatening us with the state’s violence. Tit for fucking tat.

I suspect the degeneracy and misery they sow is coincidentally of great benefit to Christendom. If a child is born with his hands outstretched for alms then he’s a vassal to whoever controls the collection plate. The destitute and dysfunctional are most in need of the mad hope of spiritual religion. The more dysfunction at play the better, with less help to go around the desperation can only deepen, creating ever more loyal subservience. This is why the junkie, the convict, and the lunatic, are often the most devout believers. Look to the worst human settlements and you’ll find the most religion. It sure looks that way. It’s coincidental, but all the same.

Christian men don’t lead. They force. They penalize. Ironically, it’s not we Satanists who love a human sacrifice. It’s the Christian type, the Muslim type, who make burnt offerings of suffering women and children. The stench is pleasing to the nostrils of Allah. Here’s a secret: killing a woman isn’t necessary to sacrifice her to God. Remember that.

We do need a program of family planning. A real institution. A revolution of prevention would provide all the family values we’d ever need. What do we get instead? Pale face sharia.

The frauen of the church want the children of rape born into this world. The morally unsatisfied Christian man wants a mother’s trauma relived at every milestone of development. Allahu Ackbar. Children of incest would skinny dip in our gene pool, protecting and defending the purity of southern heritage. Christians want their own nightmarish conjuring of “family values, with no compromise and no revision. The Handmaid’s Tale feels less like speculative fiction and more like a plausible threat under the right working conditions. Christian family values reduce women into beasts of burden. Breeding stock. If it means killing our mothers, sisters, and daughters, then praise be. They would rescind the right to terminate a high risk pregnancy. In Jesus name, hands to the sky. A family should lose its matriarch for the sake of one doomed pregnancy.

The mother’s heartbeat is a chicken heart, to the Christian – she exists for her eggs. Her own heartbeat is a petty concern. Her body is meant to warm the nest and receive the cock. Nothing more. Thy Kingdom Cum.

By the sign of the cross, the bodies of women are livestock to be tortured, not respected. Should her fetus be nonviable, this Peckerwood Caliphate would have her carry the miscarriage to term, wrecking her mental and physical health in the process. If an accident should happen, should contraceptives fail, should a bright and talented woman be impregnated against her will, the saints would have her follow through. Carry the mistake to the very bitter end. Nevermind the repercussions to herself, to her family, or to her society. God is good. “Live with your mistakes,” she’s told. “Take responsibility.” Yet abortion is often the most responsible choice possible.

Under His Eye, a profoundly deformed fetus would be denied a merciful death in the comfort of the womb. The family home would become a hospice care for the irreparably broken. Christians fancy using adjectives like “unnatural” and “abomination.” Their tongues can’t taste the irony. There couldn’t be a more apt description of permissive, degenerate behavior, than rooting for the legally required birth of genetic tragedies. And yet, they’d deny women, at every opportunity, to choose health over deformity, to choose success over pointless drudgery. Foundering horses get more mercy at the hands of the farmer.

Since these Christians can’t send us to hell themselves, they seem bent on making the Earth as miserable as possible. And with what they’re pushing, they’re getting the job done as best they can.

What might be the Satanic alternative? The third side? “Of course, whenever an issue becomes more important than a solution, don’t expect to stumble over a third side.” Dok LaVey was right. And I don’t suspect any real solution, proposed by any Satanist, stands a chance of becoming the mainstream institution. Flying the banner of Satan over an issue would probably be detrimental, anyway. Though what could we do, individually, to fight back?

We need to knock the crucifix off the flag pole. We need education, to start with. Miseducation is the church’s lifeblood. With so much agitation about the pay of teachers, there’s not much talk about the usefulness of what they’re allowed to teach. The program must be fixed, from K to 12, from Associates to Bachelors. If the public infrastructure is rendered obsolete by moral trouble, then rational, secular, wealthy individuals with a stake in the future, might consider building an alternative – freely available. Perhaps. A revival of classic education and training, strengthened by the lessons we’ve learned in the last century, could be useful. Sex ed, and what comes after birth, would have its place.

Up next, accountability. I know it sounds feminist – and I know that puts it in the bargain bin of ideology for a great many of this “congregation” – but men aren’t taking nearly responsibility they could. The burdens of sexuality and care of the young still fall, mainly, to women. Should we stay 2,000 years backwards, also?

If not, it’s time to talk about the vasectomy. The vasectomy is the most effective, lowest risk, cost effective, least detrimental form of birth control on the market. It has no effect on hormones. It poses no risk of blood clot or mood instability. The vas differens, the small tube that makes ejaculate fertile, provides around 2% of the total volume in a cumshot. If a spectator were genuflecting for her facial, she could never tell the difference. It’s reliable and reversible. Some 80% of American men are circumcised so there should be no squeamishness involved here. Unlike circumcision, the vasectomy doesn’t decrease sexual pleasure. It’s not outwardly visible.

If it’s such a man’s world, where’s the man’s choice in conception?

How many parasitic industries would collapse in a generation were the vasectomy as common as the circumcision? If the vasectomy were incentivized, normalized, and subsidized as the responsible choice it is, Christianity would spring another leak in its gas tank. And we could start to say “Good riddance.” Where Satan is no longer an effective spook to lure in the masses, abortion picks up the slack. Take away abortion and we deprive the church of its holocaust propaganda.

The courts would lose their cut of the child support racket. Ghettos would flourish. With more to go around, and less waste, what would become of the welfare state? And in turn, the nanny state?

Schools would no longer be overcrowded brainwash laundromats, where thanks to inherited hardship we still separate our whites from our colors. Missionaries could dig wells while doctors without borders could perform vasectomies. The global population could start to shrink, reduced to only the most wanted, most loved, best cared for generations of children.

Tract housing wouldn’t scar the earth and wildlife could return, ecosystems restored. With so much concern for global warming and the clear cutting of rain forests, isn’t any sensible environmental policy one that reduces the human population and human consumption together? With so many human rights violations, wouldn’t a smaller, better educated, better prepared generation, be less susceptible to tyranny? By virtue of there being fewer people, each person would matter all the more. That sounds like pro-life to me.

Is my speculation so far fetched? Could the proliferation of schooling and the all-but-compulsory vasectomy get so much accomplished? Look to their absence. Look to a Christian Nation, as forced as it is. Look everywhere ignorance and theocracy hold hands.

The outrage will have its way. A woman’s choice vs. a woman’s jail time. And for all the sorrow caused by unplanned, unmitigated, uneducated parenthood, solutions will go ignored. Remember this, the uncomfortable third side is so uncomfortable because nobody gets to feel like a messiah, and somebody has to do an honest day’s work.

HAIL SATAN! Josie Maxine Gallows Kali Yuga

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are not THE Satanic view on abortion. But they are MY Satanic views on abortion. Cross-posted from my official website. Want more? Become a member of The Kali Yuga by subscribing to my content on PATREON. www.patreon.com/josiemaxinegallows

[innuendostudios]

The newest installment of The Alt-Right Playbook, called The Death of a Euphemism. Here, we discuss what it means when politicians start getting overt about their racism, dissect the Southern Strategy, and put the 2016 election into some historical context.

You can keep this series coming out by backing me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

Say, for the sake of argument, you’re a liberal journalist in the year Two Thousand and Sixteen of the Common Era. Your beat is covering the Republican primaries. A lot of people are vying for the Presidential nomination and so it falls to you to attend and write up their debates.

Part of your job is deciphering conservative euphemisms. When the subject of illegal immigration comes up, for instance, you’ll have to explain to your audience that the idea of “protecting American jobs from undocumented workers” is Republican doubletalk for hating Mexicans. No one is tightening security at the US-Canada border, no one’s pulling over white Europeans to check their visas, and undocumented workers contribute a massive amount to the economy while taxpayers don’t have to cover social security, unemployment, or Medicare for them. “Protecting jobs” has always been used to paper over racism.

So you’re sitting there watching the debate, all these factoids at the ready, when one of the candidates says he wants to tighten the borders because “Mexico is sending us rapists and thieves.”

I’m sorry, what? What just happened? That is not a thing Republicans are supposed to say out loud, it’s against the rules. You can’t just cop to believing Mexicans are degenerates after decades of calling border security a jobs issue. Also immigrants, legal or otherwise, aren’t soldiers, since when are they “sent” by anyone?

By the time you pull yourself out of that thought spiral, the debate has shifted. Now they’re talking about The War on Terror, so you, somewhat warily, prepare to contextualize another set of euphemisms. This is a subject almost always used to mask Islamophobia. Whenever an act of domestic terror is committed by someone of Palestinian descent, politicians try to link it to ISIS or Al Qaeda, where, if the bomber or shooter is a white Christian, the terrorist is referred to as a lone wolf, not part of any pattern despite there being significantly more white Christian “lone wolves” than Palestinian terrorists. This “War on Terror” never seems to expand beyond regions with oil deposits.

But then that same candidate pipes up and says, if elected, for the sake of security he wants to create a Muslim registry, and WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!

Politicians just don’t talk like this. Conventional wisdom is this kind of language will flare up the extremists in your party while alienating your base. Appealing to both at the same time is why we invented euphemisms.

And, sure enough, in the following months, you have Far Right pundits talking about a Muslim ban on national television, waxing nostalgic about the Japanese internment camps of the 1940’s like they weren’t a national disgrace. You’ve got that same candidate casting aspersions on the judge investigating him for fraud because the judge is Mexican-American. You’re sitting there with your pen ready to write an article about the alienation of the moderate Republican base, but that moment never seems to come. The guy seemingly tanking his candidacy by appealing to extremists is the one who finally secures the nomination.

You realize, with some shock, that, in each of these cases, you are witnessing the Death of a Euphemism. The death of a euphemism is a rare celestial event. Politicians only let a euphemism die when they don’t need it anymore. This does not imply good things for Mexicans or Muslims.

The circumstances under which a euphemism may die are often spelled out in the circumstances under which it is born. So, if we want to discuss it, we’ll have to start at the beginning.

Let’s talk about euphemistic racism in the Republican Party.

In the year Nineteen Hundred and Sixty-Four, there was a man. We’ll call him Barry, ah… Silver… milk. Silvermilk was the Republican nominee for President and, for various reasons, he was almost certainly going to lose the election. The Democrats were the incumbent party, they’d pretty much controlled Congress since the New Deal, and the country was still in mourning after the devastating assassination of a Democratic President. The United States wasn’t looking to change parties.

About the only thing Silvermilk had going for him was that the Democrats had just signed into law the Civil Rights Act, expanding the voting rights of Black citizens and desegregating a lot of American life. And a lot of white voters were pissed about it.

In those days, you couldn’t really claim Republicans or Democrats were “good on race,” and Black people, when they were allowed to vote at all, were much more evenly-split between Parties than they are today. However, a Democrat pushing through the Civil Rights Act had, intentionally or otherwise, made race a partisan issue. The upshot, Silvermilk realized, was that disgruntled white people might be willing to abandon the Democratic Party if given the right incentive.

In ‘64, Republicans didn’t have much of a coalition, not since Democratic tax policies had dragged America out of the Great Depression and, incidentally, created the greatest period of economic growth and prosperity in the history of the industrialized world, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence. If Silvermilk could siphon white voters out of the Democratic Party, he might bring a strength to Republicans that they hadn’t seen in decades. But, to do that, he’d have to run his campaign on a pro-segregation platform.

Now, white racists have a complicated relationship to their own racism. They seemingly want the impossible: they want segregation without appearing to be segregationists, racist policy without the social repercussions. Possibly, they don’t even want to admit their racism to themselves. Silvermilk would need a framing that allowed the blithely racist, the overtly racist, and the non-racist to unite under a single banner.

For this purpose, Silvermilk landed on the long-enduring euphemism: “states’ rights.”

Now, obviously, the states’ rights argument didn’t originate in 1964 - it is very old, and, in fact, used to be more of a Democrat thing. We’re talking about the specific invocation of states’ rights as a defense of inequality. Silvermilk argued that desegregation - though certainly a nice idea - shouldn’t be enacted at the Federal level, because, no matter how acute the plight of Black Americans, the decision to desegregate should be left to the states. Of course, anyone embracing this rhetoric knew full well that many states would never in this lifetime desegregate unless forced to, but, you see, that’s not the aim, merely the side effect. In this framing, no one is officially pro-segregation, they’re simply anti-desegregation.

This brokered a compromise between the reactionaries and the centrists in the United States. It allowed moderate Republicans some deniability about what direction their party wais headed, and it allowed the Silvermilk campaign to secure the votes of white racists without having to publicly embrace them.

In spite of all of this, Silvermilk, as predicted, lost the election in a landslide. But it would be wrong to take that as a rejection of what he tried. This was the beginning of the modern Republican Party. This is where the Deep South, formerly a lock for the Democrats, first voted for the Party of Lincoln. This is where White Flight from the Democratic Party began, and why, today, we see white people - particularly white men - are the only demographic that consistently votes Republican. Silvermilk’s rhetoric was foundational to bringing Republicans back to power in the 80’s, finally breaking the Democrats’ hold over the House of Representatives.

Some will argue that Silvermilk did sincerely believe in states’ rights, and that rebuilding the Republican Party by appealing to white racists was not his intent. (And if you believe that, perhaps I can interest you in a very promising real estate venture in Florida.) But, regardless of what you believe about his intentions, that is how “states’ rights” has been used: as a cudgel in service of bigotry. States’ rights was invoked - and is still invoked - to defend anti-miscegenation laws, anti-abortion laws, same-sex marriage bans, trans bathroom bills, spousal rape, you name it. Every time there are gains for social minorities, the Republicans shore up the votes of bigots who find these gains offensive.

It’s hard for the Left to argue with the “states’ rights” argument because it’s not designed to make sense. Republicans will say we should leave an issue like same-sex marriage up to the states, but only after a Federal ban on same-sex marriage proves infeasible. Up until that moment, they are in favor of government overreach. So “states’ rights” has never been a consistent philosophy, but, then, why should it be? It’s a euphemism. Its sole purpose is bringing an extreme ideology into mainstream politics.

About the only blessing of a political euphemism is that the belief that can’t be spoken is a belief that is, to some extent, contained. The “states’ rights” argument makes bigotry more pervasive, but keeps it somewhat less draconian than the bigots might prefer. If you have to smuggle your marriage ban into a “states’ rights” argument, you’re painted into a corner should your state choose to legalize. Then, if you want to keep the homophobic vote secure, you’ve gotta find and popularize a different euphemism.

Managing an alliance between moderates and reactionaries, especially when you can’t acknowledge that one half of the alliance even exists, is a hard needle to thread, and, depending on who’s in charge of the Party at a given time, the alliance can be tenuous. The Far Right is often viewed by their own party as the madwoman in the attic: “We feed her, but we don’t talk about her.” Republican campaigners are somewhat known for going out and getting Far Right folks registered to vote and then talking shit about them when they’re out of earshot. I suspect they enjoy standing next to extremists because it makes them look moderate by comparison, though, we should be clear: if you need to stand next to someone whose bumper sticker that says “If I Had Known This I Would Have Picked My Own Cotton” to not look racist, your house is not in order.

And the Far Right knows this. Say what you want about them, they’re not all fools. Their Party often doesn’t respect them because it doesn’t have to; who the hell else are they gonna vote for? They are the necessary evil. But if what a person wants, what they actually want, is segregation, is a nationwide ban on same-sex marriage, is the mass deportation of Mexicans, is the closing of borders to all Muslim nations, this euphemistic “states’ rights,” “job security,” “War on Terror” half-measure bullshit isn’t going to cut it forever. When you court the vote of bigots, sooner or later it’s put up or shut up.

I don’t say this to generate sympathy for them. None of these are desires worth having and no nation calling itself a democracy should ever represent them, not even as watered-down euphemisms.

But, to bring us back to the recent past: I say this because, in 2016, it had been a long time since these people felt that any party had truly represented them. And this is why a candidate who doesn’t say “protecting jobs,” he says “Mexicans are rapists,” who doesn’t say “War on Terror,” he says “Muslim registry,” appeals to them. He says, in so many words, “The Islamophobes, the racists, the sexists, the segregationists, they are my base. I will not appeal to the moderates and treat them as the necessary evil. I will speak to them directly, without euphemism, because, honestly, I don’t know how euphemisms work. These are my people, and they are the ones the Republican Party should embrace with open arms.”

This is supposed to be political suicide.

In the months that follow, it looks like maybe it will be. All the other journalists are writing this up a fluke and an embarrassment. Him securing the nomination has doomed the Republican Party. The moderates will never elect him. Not only will he fail, he will lay bare the ugly truth about his entire Party. He lags in the polls. Republican lawmakers disavow him. The Republican National Committee revokes their endorsement. Statisticians say not only will he lose in the swing states, but some Republican strongholds might vote Democrat for the first time in forty years. They suspect he could drag Republicans in the House and Senate down with him; Democratic control of all three branches of government. His loss will be as sweeping as Silvermilk’s in ‘64, and the ensuing Republican realignment will be as dramatic.

But, when the day comes, that’s not the headline you have to write.

How do you make sense of this? You’re a political writer, you’re supposed to tell people what this means. How do you even begin?

It means party loyalty is one of the strongest things in politics today. Come Election Day, people who disavowed him was making phone calls on his behalf.

It means the Republican Party has drifted to the Right far enough that even the so-called moderates are more closely aligned with white nationalists than they are to the moderate Left.

It means, in all likelihood, the bigots are the base now, and the moderates the hangers-on. Politicians can be as racist as they want, because who the hell else are Republicans gonna vote for? That’s not the realignment you were expecting.

There’s no saying how long this state of affairs will last. One election doesn’t mean the Center Right and Far Right know how to build a coalition. Maybe a year or two from now, when this guy has passed a little legislation, the moderates will have buyer’s remorse and the extremists will feel their guy was more blunt talk than he was action. Everything will be worse and no one will be happy.

But that’s not much comfort, because it tells you almost nothing about how the next election will go. At this point, anything could happen.

A euphemism dies when it no longer works to disguise things that can’t be said, or when culture at large decides things that can’t be said are now sayable. In the last couple videos, we’ve talked about how the Far Right mainstreams a, for instance, racist idea by convincing people it’s not racist. What we’re seeing here is the endgame of that process: once the public embraces them as people, elects their politicians, and implements their policies, they begin, bit by bit, to drop the pretense. Because, if they want to close the borders once and for all, it’s in their best interest to stop pretending border control is about protecting jobs.

A sad truth about humans is they will often accept almost any justification to keep doing whatever they’re already doing. If someone has spent years favoring border security - they’ve voted for it, their taxes have paid for it, maybe they’ve even called ICE on someone - and one day you tell them, “Keep doing what you’re doing, but, by the way, it’s not about jobs anymore, now it’s about keeping Mexicans out,” a lot of them will roll with it. We like to think action follows belief, and sometimes it does, but at least as often it’s the reverse. And that’s a dangerous thing when given the choice to do something different or do the same thing only more.

To the Far Right, a euphemism is like a calf: something to be brought into this world or inherited, removed from its original context, raised to adolescence, and then slaughtered when the time is right. Historically, the first sign that things are about to get a lot worse for minorities is when the racism stops being euphemistic.

In a sense, the Far Right and the liberal journalist share a purpose. The journalist’s goal is to expose the truth behind the euphemism, in the hopes that people will abandon bigotry once it’s been made explicit. The Far Right does the same, hoping they won’t.

[kolinnnn]

Political Shit, Pay of no mind.

I’ve been trying my damnedest to keep my channels overall politics-free for the past two years. Buuuuuuuut, I’m getting to the point where I can’t bite my tongue any longer. I’m physically feeling the NEED to call out senseless bullshit that I see. So, without further ado: a post from Facebook.

“So let me get this straight: We’re a nation that accepts pornography but hates abuse. A nation that doesn’t believe in gender but fights for women’s rights. We’re a nation that believes no child should be left behind by we have aborted over 60 million. We’re a nation where heroes have died so our flag could fly over a free nation, but then we give the title “heroes” to wealthy athletes who kneel in disrespect. We’re a nation where political parties ignore the corruption of their own party while condemning the corruption of the other. We’re a nation of laws, yet we’re a nation where that only applies if you’re not politically powerful. We’re a nation that has in God we trust printed on our money but we’re a nation where the ACLU sues people who makes His name known in public. We’re the “greatest” nation on the earth yet we consume more antidepressants than any other nation in the world. We’re a nation that pledges we’re “one” yet we’re a nation of aggressive division. And we wonder why there is so much confusion?”

I’d like to break this down line by line, but first an overall note: I copied this line by line. It’s laden with poor grammar. This was not my decision, but the author’s.

“We’re a nation that accepts pornography but hates abuse”

This is factually accurate. Also, there is nothing wrong with either of these things. I’m lead to believe that this was written by a “Christian” who wants us to believe that abuse and porn are on the same level of evil. However, there’s one thing that porn has that abuse doesn’t: CONSENT. Two consenting adults participating in sexual activities that have been predetermined and even have gone the extra step and have consented to the recording and transmission of said activities is fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. However, abuse, by definition, is the complete lack of consent.

“A nation that doesn’t believe in gender but fights for women’s rights.”

This is partially inaccurate. It’s not that we don’t believe in gender, it’s that we’re becoming more enlightened to the fact that gender is more of a spectrum than it is a binary identifier. We’re also at the point, intellectually, where changing your external appearance to match your gender is an amazing thing that we’re able to accomplish. Sadly, however, calling us a “nation who believes” would be an overstatement, however this is something that’s changing all the time. It’s changing because we are fighting for women’s rights, we’re fighting for trans rights, we’re fighting for gender equality. Is it so bad to want everyone to live their best life, regardless of what they identify as?

“We’re a nation that believes no child should be left behind by we have aborted over 60 million.”

As a child that grew up during the beginning of “No Child Left Behind” I wholeheartedly wish that were a true statement. However, time and time again, we’re shown that we’re a nation that LOVES fetuses. Like it’s some sick fetish. As soon as the child is born, that child is left behind. Granted, not always by their parents. Because of all these children that are left behind, because of our nation’s inability to properly teach growing kids how to have safe sex, many expectant mothers don’t have the means to care for a child properly. Some pregnancies are products of abusive environments. Also, not to pick and choose, but the CDC reports that there have been only 44.5 million legal abortions in the United States. So, let’s say the 60 million number is correct, that would mean 15.5 million women have found it necessary to risk their own life to ensure that their child isn’t left to live a terrible life. I could go on and on about this.

“We’re a nation where heroes have died so our flag could fly over a free nation, but then we give the title ‘heroes’ to wealthy athletes who kneel in disrespect.”

*sigh* This one is difficult. I’m going to skip some of my feelings and stick to the facts. We give the title “hero” to many people, including wealthy athletes to don’t do anything, respectful or disrespectful. We even call people who have done horrible and terrible things “heroes.” Also, as a note: Colin Kaepernick knelt as a sign of respect as recommended by US Army vet Nate Boyer for his peaceful protests.

“We’re a nation where political parties ignore the corruption of their own party while condemning the corruption of the other.”

I actually have nothing to say to this... it’s true? I mean, overall, Democrats will call out the actions of others, and they will, in the end, go away. I haven’t heard of a Democrat being accused multiple times of sexual assault and then getting elected or (effectively) promoted. I’m not exactly one to ask on this, I’ll admit.

“We’re a nation of laws, yet we’re a nation where that only applies if you’re not politically powerful.”

Also true, here’s looking at most of the GOP?

“We’re a nation that has in God we trust printed on our money but we’re a nation where the ACLU sues people who makes His name known in public.”

I’m fairly certain that this is inaccurate. As a person who has gone to churches their entire life, I have yet to attend a house of worship that has ever been sued by the ACLU. The ACLU is more of a legal mediator between government and the people whose voices can’t be heard, rather than an atheist attack dog, like you make it sound.

“We’re the ‘greatest’ nation on the earth yet we consume more antidepressants than any other nation in the world.”

First, no, we’re not. The United States of America is actually ranked 8th in greatest nations. Switzerland is actually the best, on average. In 2016, we rank the highest consumer of antidepressants, barely jumping ahead of Iceland. Given that we have 1,000 times the population, I’m not so sure about how those numbers work out. ANYWAY! Do you ever wonder why we take so many antidepressants? It has nothing to do with how great we are as a country. It’s because we have problems. We all have problems. However, it would appear that our government, our elected officials, the people put in power for the greater good of their citizens do not care about mental healthcare. Even to this day, there are so many Republicans that believe that depression is something you can just get over, and so, it’s very difficult to get mental healthcare. I would know, I’ve experienced the hoops (whether it be monetary or through insurance or just lack of care providers) that people need to jump through just to see a therapist.

“We’re a nation that pledges we’re ‘one’ yet we’re a nation of aggressive division.”

I don’t think someone paid any attention to the pledge of allegiance. We don’t pledge that we’re “one” like we’re the musketeers or something. We’re literally saying that we’re one nation, indivisible. The pledge was written after the civil war at an ebbing point of nationalistic pride. “One nation, indivisible” is essentially a response to the results of the war, proclaiming American unity. Secession of any state can only happen through due process and approval of federal Congress. Or, quite simply, it’s the last bit to marital vows; “till death do us part.” We’ve always been a nation of aggressive division. The problem is now that no one is listening, and some are so set in their bigotry that they’ve cemented their feet in their standing and vowing to never falter, thus destroying the work that our forefathers have done.

“And we wonder why there is so much confusion?”

See previous line. We’re a nation that doesn’t believe in the burden of proof. When ignorance cries “google it” while not doing any actual research. We are slowly destroying ourselves because we are no longer using facts as facts.

That’s all. I’m done for tonight.

[patriotsnet]

Why Do Republicans Support The Death Penalty

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-do-republicans-support-the-death-penalty/

Why Do Republicans Support The Death Penalty

A Change In Philosophy

Do You Support The Death Penalty? Public Opinion POLL Released

Conservatives have been slowly turning away from the death penalty for years, as high-profile innocence cases have helped frame capital punishment as a problem of out-of-control big government.

In January 2000, after a series of exonerations of people who had been sentenced to death, the Republican governor of Illinois, George Ryan, declared a moratorium on executions. At the time, Texas Gov. George W. Bush was running for president, and the national press questioned whether an innocent person had faced execution under his watch; soon after, his fellow Republicans in the state legislature voted to make DNA testing more available for prisoners.

From 2014 to 2019, Republican support for the death penalty, as opposed to life sentences, dropped from 68% to 58%, according to Gallup Polls. Republican legislators in Nebraska voted to repeal the punishment in 2015, although the states residents then voted to bring the punishment back.

Some lawmakers have been motivated by anti-abortion arguments about the sanctity of human life and stories of Christian redemption on death row. Others talk about the cost to taxpayers. South Dakota state Sen. Arthur Rusch previously served as a judge in a capital case.

When I look at a bill, I dont see color at all. I look at an individual and say, If an individual commits a crime of this nature, should they be put on death row or not? he said.

Abortion Deliberately Ends A Human Life

To treat abortion-minded mothers and abortionist as murderers is not a wild stretch. In Ohio, many believe this is appropriate, and that the woman and abortionist who knowingly violate natural and written law should be punished for ending a human life. Setting that punishment is not easy.

It is plain that abortion ends the life of an innocent human person, who has committed no wrong, has no right to a defender, and is afforded no due process or given the benefit of appeals. She can be destroyed by the whim of a pregnant woman and abortionist. By contrast, the death penalty ends the life of a guilty person, who has willfully committed a known wrong, and was afforded all the due process possible before being put to death.

To see these versions of ending a life as categorically different, and to abhor the first and support the second is not hypocrisy. To some, it is common sense.

Executions Are Mostly A Red

Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected on Wednesday to issue a moratorium on the death penalty in California, granting reprieves to the hundreds of people on death row. By signing his executive order, Newsom will lower the countrys death row population by a quarter.

The move isnt particularly surprising considering the Democrats record as an elected official he was an early proponent of same-sex marriage as mayor of San Francisco and considering Californias politics. Nor should it be surprising that President Trump weighed in Wednesday morning to oppose Newsoms move.

Defying voters, the Governor of California will halt all death penalty executions of 737 stone cold killers, Trump said. Friends and families of the always forgotten VICTIMS are not thrilled, and neither am I!

The death penalty is not a new entrant to the political culture wars, but in recent years, the partisan split on the issue has widened. A Pew Research Center poll completed last year found that a small majority of Americans support the death penalty but that those views were split by party. More than three-quarters of Republicans support executions while only about a third of Democrats agree.

Among the groups most supportive of the issue are white evangelical Protestants; more than 7 in 10 support the use of the death penalty.

In 2014, support for the death penalty among Democrats dropped under 50 percent in Pews polling, the first year in which that happened.

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Republican States Have Most Prisoner Executions

Thirty-two states have the death penalty on their legal code. Republican-dominated states have performed an enormous majority of U.S. prisoner executions since 1976. Of the 1,359 executions since that date — the number reported by the Death Penalty Information Center as of Dec. 18, 2013 — 1,110 occurred in Republican-dominated Southern states. About one-third of those sentences were in Texas, where 508 death row inmates have been put to death in the past 37 years. Twelve people who were eventually proved innocent were released from the state’s death row during that period.

references

Conservatives And The Death Penalty

Some conservatives including Michelle Malkin, Jay Sekulow, and me oppose capital punishment. But most conservatives and Republicans support it, and their support hasnt really softened over the years, as Charles Fain Lehman demonstrates at the Free Beacon. In 2000, 70 percent of Republicans supported it. In 2009, 70 percent of Republicans did. And in 2018, again, it had 70 percent support. The drop in crime rates, changes in the composition of the party, the publicity about people taken off death row after years on it: None of it seems to have caused Republicans to budge.

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George Bush On The Death Penalty

Former President Bush is a supporter of the death penalty, though he does believe that DNA testing should be implemented before the death penalty is used. He stated, In America, we must make doubly sure no person is held to account for a crime he or she did not commit, so we are dramatically expanding the use of DNA evidence to prevent wrongful conviction. He also supported funding the use of DNA testing for use in death penalty cases. During Bushs time as governor of Texas, the state had the most executions in the nation. When asked about this number, Bush responded, I do believe that if the death penalty is administered swiftly, justly and fairly, it saves lives. My job is to ask two questions. Is the person guilty of the crime? And did the person have full access to the courts of law? And I can tell you, in all cases those answers were affirmative. Unlike some other Republicans, who support the death penalty for the sake of victims and their families, Bush supports it as a means to prevent future crimes. He has stated, I dont think you should support the death penalty to seek revenge. I dont think thats right. I think the reason to support the death penalty is because it saves other peoples lives.

The Latest From Washington

When Congress returns from its Memorial Day recess, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer says the chamber will take up measures to set national standards for elections, which, at least for federal elections, would override state laws that limit voting. Republicans are expected to filibuster the proposals.

The bills the Democrats support aim, in part, to overturn several Supreme Court rulings that, as David Savage wrote, have tilted election law in favor of the Republicans.

Biden and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito continued on Wednesday to try to chip away at the impasse on infrastructure spending. The gap between the two sides remains very wide, however, as Eli Stokols reported, and patience has begun to wear thin at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Doyle McManus looked at the rewards for getting COVID-19 vaccinations that some states are offering. They may help get the U.S. to its vaccination goals, but lotteries alone probably wont do the trick, he wrote.

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Barack Obama On The Death Penalty

President Obama is a supporter of the death penalty in certain cases, stating, I believe that the death penalty is appropriate in certain circumstances. There are extraordinarily heinous crimes, terrorism, the harm of children, in which it may be appropriate. However, he voted against expanding the death penalty in cases of less severe crimes during his time as a state legislator. He does not believe that the death penalty prevents crime, but rather believes that these crimes simply deserve such a punishment. Obama states, While the evidence tells me that the death penalty does little to deter crime, I believe there are some crimesmass murder, the rape and murder of a childso heinous, so beyond the pale, that the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage by meting out the ultimate punishment.

Obama called the incident in Oklahoma deeply disturbing, and has asked for a review of execution policies across the country. A Justice Department spokesperson has stated that the department will expand this review to include a survey of state-level protocols and related policy issues.

Republican Views On Death Penalty

New Coalition supports death penalty repeal

About 81 percent of Republicans favor the death penalty, making up a majority of Americans who support the practice. Republican supporters often argue that capital punishment deters murder because no one wants to face the consequence of death, an assertion the American Civil Liberties Union reports is not based on fact. Although some question the morality of sentencing a human to death, those in favor of the death penalty argue the punishment is morally acceptable for certain crimes, such as rape or murder.

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Why Does The Republican Party Support The Death Penalty And Oppose Abortion The Reason Is Economics Not Ethics

The recent experience with the novel coronavirus and the economic effects of the shutdown gives us all an opportunity to calculate how much the pro-life party values life. Approximately 30 million Americans lost their jobs because of the coronavirus pandemic. The shutdown if continued through the phased reopening without being rushed will save perhaps 1 million American lives. It follows that to the politicians who wished to end the shutdown in the early summer, one life to them is worth not more than about 30 jobs. It also explains the Republican fascination with the death penalty. If the average death penalty case costs about $100,000 to try, which we can evaluate as equal to roughly 2 jobs for a year, but if only one out of every 40 people convicted of a death penalty crime is actually executed, then each execution produces roughly 80 jobs, a very decent return on investment from this coldly capitalist point of view.

Arguments Against The Death Penalty Haven’t Changed

Antonio has urged an end to the death penalty in Ohio since taking office in 2011, without much support from Republican lawmakers, though her bill last session had two Republican co-sponsors.;

Its time for the state of Ohio to take the compassionate, pragmatic and prudent step to abolish the death penalty, which has been found to be expensive, impractical, unjust, inhumane and even erroneous, Antonio said.

Backers of the bill noted the legal process in death penalty cases takes decades, and the resulting costs are more expensive than the cost to keep inmates in prison for life. Huffman noted that a life sentence without parole or early release offers “no easy way out” for a killer.

Life in prison is a terminal sentence,” Huffman said. “It gives families the assurance that the person who murdered their loved ones will spend the rest of their natural life behind bars.”

They pointed to disparities in the administration of capital punishment for people of color and the possibility of putting those innocent of crimes to death.

Wrongful convictions happen at every level of the criminal legal system, but when there is a life on the line, the system has to work, said Hannah Kubbins, executive director of Ohioans to Stop Executions. The 170-plus exonerees are living proof that it doesnt.

Granted, the arguments against the death penalty havent changed. But, Antonio said, there’s been a shift in Ohio and nationally.

Reporter Anna Staver contributed.

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Differing Views Of Death Penalty By Race And Ethnicity Education Ideology

There are wide ideological differences within both parties on this issue. Among Democrats, a 55% majority of conservatives and moderates favor the death penalty, a position held by just 36% of liberal Democrats . A third of liberal Democrats strongly oppose the death penalty, compared with just 14% of conservatives and moderates.

While conservative Republicans are more likely to express support for the death penalty than moderate and liberal Republicans, clear majorities of both groups favor the death penalty .

As in the past, support for the death penalty differs across racial and ethnic groups. Majorities of White , Asian and Hispanic adults favor the death penalty for persons convicted of murder. Black adults are evenly divided: 49% favor the death penalty, while an identical share oppose it.

Support for the death penalty also varies across age groups. About half of those ages 18 to 29 favor the death penalty, compared with about six-in-ten adults ages 30 to 49 and those 65 and older . Adults ages 50 to 64 are most supportive of the death penalty, with 69% in favor.

There are differences in attitudes by education, as well. Nearly seven-in-ten adults who have not attended college favor the death penalty, as do 63% of those who have some college experience but no degree.

The Latest From California

COVID-19 restrictions protected Californias economy, and its now poised for a euphoric rebound, according to the UCLA Anderson quarterly forecast. As Margot Roosevelt reported, Californias economy shrank less than the U.S. average during the pandemic year, and the UCLA forecasters expect the state to add jobs faster than the country as a whole.

California, however, also had huge problems delivering unemployment benefits to those who lost their jobs. As Sarah Wire and Patrick McGreevy wrote, a new report by the U.S. Department of Labors inspector general chronicles missteps by a dozen state unemployment agencies around the country, including California, which left millions in the lurch.

Meantime, state lawmakers considered requiring $7 billion in COVID-19 bonuses for healthcare workers. As Melody Gutierrez reported, hospitals, which estimate they would have to pay about $4 billion, strongly opposed the plan. On Thursday, the state Assembly .

Lawmakers to pay for programs to prevent gun violence, McGreevy reported. The measure fell short of the two-thirds vote it needed.

San Luis Obispo County delivered a sizable block of signatures on petitions to recall Newsom. Faith Pinho looked at how COVID restrictions helped fuel the recall drive in a decidedly purple region.

Stay in touch

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Can The Death Penalty Be Fixed These Republicans Think So

A growing number of conservative lawmakers want to overhaul capital punishment, or end it.

Two years ago, a group of Republican lawmakers toured the death chamber in Oklahoma, which has been responsible for more executions per capita than any other state in the last half-century. They took in the jet-black gurney straps, the phone connected to the governors office and the microphone used for last words.

The hair rises on the back of your neck, said state Rep. Kevin McDugle. A few legislators couldnt be in the room very long.

They continued on to death row to see Richard Glossip, who has spent more than two decades in solitary confinement, facing execution for a 1997 murder. Glossip says he had nothing to do with the crime, and a growing number of conservative lawmakers believe him.

I just remember putting my hand up on the glass, McDugle recalled, and he put his hand up, and I said, You’ve got people fighting for you. Keep your head up, brother.

As Oklahoma officials seek to resume putting prisoners to death later this year, McDugle has pursued bills in the state legislature to help those on death row prove their innocence, knowing Glossip could be among the first facing execution.

My fear is some people will be executed before we pass a bill, McDugle said.

Kansas House Members Conservative To Liberal Support Abolishing The Death Penalty

C.J. Janovy

Wilma Loganbills son David was murdered in 1989 in Wichita. Afterwards, I wanted to hurt the person who murdered my son in the same way that he hurt me. But I never wanted him dead. My son wouldnt have wanted that, she said in a pamphlet called Voices of Kansas: Murder Victims Families Speak Out Against the Death Penalty.

If you were looking for a group of 34 members of the Kansas House who represented the best hope of bipartisanship that mythical yet evasive unity some people say they want right now you could would find it in the list of sponsors for a bill thats most likely going nowhere this year.

Rui Xu

In one sense, this does not appear to be a pressing issue for Kansas. Nobodys been executed in the state since 1965. The U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty in 40 states in 1972, but the Legislature re-instated it in 1994. Ten men are now awaiting this punishment.

In another sense, though, its a situation maybe the only one where lawmakers whose political views are widely divergent have found common cause based on principle.

Some of them are bringing strong voices against abortion and they dont see much difference in the abortion issue and this death penalty issue, Schreiber said of his co-sponsors. Some see it as social justice issue like I do, where, is this the right thing to be involved with deliberately executing people?

We make a mistake and theres no redress on that, he said.

Republishing Guidelines

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Stanley: A Conservative Viewpoint On Ending The Death Penalty

Bill Stanley

This is a Virginia Department of Corrections undated photo of the gurney used for executions at the Greensville Corrections Center in Jarratt.

I am a conservative Republican, and I am against the death penalty.

During the ten years I have been privileged to represent the 20th District in the Virginia Senate, I have consistently opposed efforts to expand it. That may seem counter-intuitive for those who assume conservatives must support the death penalty as a key component of Republicans tough on crime stance. In my view, you can be tough on crime, be a conservative Republican, and be against the death penalty for both moral and legal reasons.

Opposition to capital punishment is not just a personal belief of mine, but is consistent with my conservative principles. This reasoning is based upon three basic principles: my strong faith in God and the gift of life; my appreciation that our judicial system is not infallible; and my firm belief that capital punishment empowers the government with an awesome authority to which it is not entitled.

In theory, the death penalty makes sense: people who commit heinous acts forfeit their right to live. And as human beings, vengeance has become a part of our emotional lexicon in seeking justice for the unconscionable murder of another human being. However, the death penalty in practice is not that simple.

[surly01]

The Week the World Changed: Feb. 2, 2020

Originally published on the Doomstead Diner on February 2, 2020

“Men in general are quick to believe that which they wish to be true.”

― Julius Caesar

Certain weeks in history resonate with a significance not always understood at the time, but made clearer as the days pass into months, years, and into history. The week of October 14,1066 the Battle of Hastings was fought, leading to the Norman conquest of England and the end of Anglo-Saxon rule. During the week of April 12,1861, Pierre Beauregard ordered the shelling of Fort Sumter, and with that act of sedition the beginning of America's Civil War.  The week of June 28, 1914 a Bosnian separatist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the presumptive Hapsburg heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and touched off a series of events that led to the first World War. One could make a case that the past week may join them in the ranks of infamy: the US Senate, for all intents and purposes, elevated a king; Great Britain left the European Union; and the Wuhan coronavirus, an agent of uncertain communicability but established lethality, was making its way across the globe via air routes.

After his return to Rome and settling the resultant civil war, Julius Caesar, noting the ranks of the Roman Senate had been depleted, appointed many new senators, partisans all. In this way did Caesar grease the skids for the exercise of unlimited power, to be checked only by one of history's most famous assassinations.The Senate had elevated Julius Caesar to "dictator in perpetuity" among the various titles and honors the Senate bestowed upon him, one month before his assassination in February, 44 BC.

This week we witnessed another wholly co-opted legislative body render itself impotent and hold another executive beyond the reach of law and accountability, as it decided to not entertain witnesses at Trump's impeachment trial. WaPo reports the Senate set to acquit Trump next week after bid for witnesses is defeated. Retiring 79-year old Lamar Alexander gave the game away when he folded his chin-stroking concerns. Lisa Murkowski did likewise. All 47 Democrats and two Republicans, Mitt Romney and Susan Collins, vote in favor of hearing witnesses in an impressive display of party loyalty.

Alexander thus explained himself:

I worked with other senators to make sure that we have the right to ask for more documents and witnesses, but there is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven and that does not meet the United States Constitution's high bar for an impeachable offense. There is no need for more evidence to prove that the president asked Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter; he said this on television on October 3, 2019, and during his July 25, 2019, telephone call with the president of Ukraine. There is no need for more evidence to conclude that the president withheld United States aid, at least in part, to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens; the House managers have proved this with what they call a "mountain of overwhelming evidence."

But so what? Just to make sure you didn't miss it: Alexander (and the other Senate Rs) hold that bribery, extortion and misappropriating Congressionally allocated funds for foreign aid is A-OK. Likewise foreign interference in Presidential elections: the door is wide open. Alexander acknowledged the illegality of Trump’s actions while also concluding that those actions don't meet the standard for removal. He said there was no need to call witnesses, because the Democrats had already proved the facts of their case against Trump. It just wasn't impeachment-worthy.

One wonders what would be. It is clear, as The Guardian observed, Even a smoking gun would not be enough. House lawyers like Alan Dershowitz argued that if the President thinks that his actions are in the national interest, he can get away with anything that crosses his mind. Thus the unitary executive dream of Richard Nixon is realized: "If the President does it, it can't be illegal." The Trump team has out-brazened Nixon in withholding evidence, ignoring subpoenas, alternately bribing and intimidating jurors, and extending "executive privilege" well past all previous limits. And the Senate has effectively signed off on this, placing Trump beyond accountability or consequence.

One recognizes that A Trial Without Witnesses Is No Trial at All. Senate Republicans were quite clear that no amount of evidence was going to oblige them to remove an active felon from office, because judges, abortion, Israel, and most importantly, that sweet, sweet boodle flowing in from billionaire bunkers, Las Vegas casinos and St. Petersburg banks, all of it flowing over the body politic like a steady, soothing stream of warm urine.

In the New Yorker, Susan Glasser put the Senate out of its misery with a fine article, The Senate Can Stop Pretending Now.

Alexander’s late-night statement was no real surprise. The “closest friend” to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—as McConnell made sure to point out to the Times, earlier this week—Alexander ended up where most Senate Republicans were always expected to end up. He criticized Trump but refused to vote to remove him from office. After making that decision, Alexander went a step further and said that there was no real need to hear any of the evidence that Trump has so far successfully ordered his Administration not to provide. Even the last-minute revelation, on Sunday night, in the Times, of Bolton’s unpublished manuscript, could not sway Alexander; he knew enough.

When your mind is made up, who needs additional evidence? One marvels at the way that fear of Trump has knuckled these solons. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy noted on TV that there appeared to be two impeachment trials: for Democrats, one about Trump's crimes; and for Republicans, one about the malfeasances of the "deep state" and the "fake news media." Apparently "laws" only account when Repugs can use them as weapons on Dems. And while on the subject of "laws," let's not forget that Rand Paul, that human pustule with a bad toupee, tried to work the alleged whistle-blower’s name into a question on the Senate floor. John Roberts woke from his otherwise deep sleep to have none of that. So Paul took to a press conference and to Twitter to reveal the whistleblower's supposed identity. That used to be a crime.

And Charlie Pierce, in Lamar Alexander Has Ushered in the Age of Fearful Men, gets it exact:

Late Thursday night, Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, pretty much sank the effort to have witnesses testify in the impeachment trial of the president, and Alexander did so in a statement that is going to go down in the annals of unmitigated weaselspeak…  

Alexander is being a poltroon on so many different levels here. In addition to arguing that a guilty president* is guilty but should go unpunished, Alexander is claiming that the solution to a ratfcked election is to hope the next one isn’t ratfcked. Good Christ, what a waste of a handsome piece of office furniture in the Senate chamber this man has turned out to be.

As your government slips away as surely as a cabal murdered Caesar, keep in mind thst Trump and his minions have orchestrated a limited TV series for a remarkably uninformed audience: According to the Annenberg Civics Knowledge Survey, 1 in 5 Americans can’t name single branch of U.S. government. Other findings:

In 2019, 2 in 5 Americans (39%) were able to name all three branches of government.

More than half of Americans (55%) correctly said it’s inaccurate to state that people who are in the U.S. illegally do not have any rights under the Constitution. In other words, that people who are in the U.S. illegally do have some rights under the Constitution.

More than a third of those surveyed (37 percent) cannot name any of the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.

When my daughter was in high school, I was astonished to learn that she had NOT had a civics class. Apparently some of what we used to learn in civics is covered in "US History," and we all know how well history classes were taught. By high school football coaches reading from an open textbook. So a majority of people taking their place as adults have no idea how the government is supposed to work. And they vote. Enjoy your republic.

In Brexit news, The UK has now left the European Union, after 47 years inside the bloc. The Prime minister, a lower-octane Trump, rang the gong celebrating his own success and pledged to make no concessions to the EU in negotiating necessary trade deals as he salutes ‘a turning point in the life of our nation.’ And on Brexit day one: Johnson went for broke with hardline trade deal.

No sooner had the union jacks been lowered in Brussels and Strasbourg, after 47 years of tortured British membership, than Boris Johnson was preparing to launch the UK into yet another uncompromising battle with the remaining 27 nations of the European Union.

As he hit the gong with glee, he was just flexing his muscles for more combat with the UK’s now ex-partners. There now begins an 11-month transition period during which the prime minister and his government will face the herculean task of securing a future trading and security relationship with the EU. If there is no deal by 31 December, the UK will face a cliff-edge descent into the economic unknown.

Here is a summary of the yesterday’s events:

The EU will back Spain over its territorial claims to Gibraltar in the next phase of Brexit negotiations by giving Madrid the power to exclude the British overseas territory from any trade deal struck with Brussels. The Spanish government has insisted that the Rock be included in the EU’s opening negotiating position.

Boris Johnson intends to impose full customs checks on all goods coming into the UK from the EU in a break with previous government policy, according to reports. The government’s policy had been to waive customs checks and tariffs on 87% of goods coming into the country and only impose limited checks on goods.

You might be surprised to learn that, as the Wuhan coronavirus has claimed more than 300 people in China, and several Chinese cities, including Wuhan, are under lockdown and quarantine, China has erected a hospital in Wuhan to deal with the emergency in nine days. Cases have popped up all over the world via air travelers from China.Meanwhile, here at home, the United States has never been less prepared for a pandemic. Laurie Garrett in Foreign Policy reported that Trump Has Sabotaged America’s Coronavirus Response—not just for the public but for the government itself, which largely finds itself in the dark.

In 2018, the Trump administration fired the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command, including the White House management infrastructure. In numerous phone calls and emails with key agencies across the U.S. government, the only consistent response I encountered was distressed confusion. If the United States still has a clear chain of command for pandemic response, the White House urgently needs to clarify what it is.

In a cost-cutting fury in spring of 2018, The Trump administration, reduced $15 billion in national health spending, slashed staffing and the global disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS. The sort of wasteful expense that gets in the way of tax cuts for the rich.

In 2017 and 2018, the philanthropist billionaire Bill Gates met repeatedly with Bolton and his predecessor, H.R. McMaster, warning that ongoing cuts to the global health disease infrastructure would render the United States vulnerable to, as he put it, the “significant probability of a large and lethal modern-day pandemic occurring in our lifetimes.” And an independent, bipartisan panel formed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies concluded that lack of preparedness was so acute in the Trump administration that the “United States must either pay now and gain protection and security or wait for the next epidemic and pay a much greater price in human and economic costs.”

The Trump administration has appointed a 12-member "blue-ribbon" commission led by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, the former pharmaceutical lobbyist and pharma CEO. No idea how this task force will function or when it will even meet. This ad hoc group[ is supposed to fulfill the function of lashing together the efforts of a number of different organizations and management layers.

Bess Levin reported in Vanity Fair that from the guy who brought you attacking another country as “after-dinner entertainment” and furloughed government employees unable to afford food should “take out a loan,” comes this:

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Thursday that the coronavirus outbreak in China will help “accelerate the return of jobs to North America.”

“Well, first of all, every American’s heart has to go out to the victims of the coronavirus. So I don’t want to talk about a victory lap over a very unfortunate, very malignant disease. But the fact is, it does give businesses yet another thing to consider when they go through their review of their supply chain,” Ross said during an interview with Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo….

The virus has killed more than 100 people and sickened thousands, and while the cases are mostly concentrated in China, it has been detected in more than a dozen other countries, including the U.S.

Happy days are here again. So we've got that going for us.

Surly1 was an administrator and contributing author to Doomstead Diner. He is the author of numerous rants, screeds and spittle-flecked invective here and elsewhere. He lives a quiet domestic existence in Southeastern Virginia with his wife Contrary. Descended from a long line of people to whom one could never tell anything, all opinions are his and his alone, because he paid full retail for everything he has managed to learn.

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New story in Politics from Time: Federal Judge Blocks Georgia’s Controversial Law Banning Most Abortions After 6 Weeks

A federal judge permanently struck down Georgia’s controversial law banning most abortions after six weeks on Monday, ruling that it violates the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The controversial law, which was passed in 2019, would have banned most abortions after a doctor detected fetal cardiac activity, which can happen as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, sometimes before a woman realizes she is pregnant. The law included some exceptions for victims of rape and incest but only if they had filed official police reports.

On Monday, District Judge Steve C. Jones ruled that the law infringed upon constitutional rights, including those established by the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade and the 1992 decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

“In sum, the undisputed material facts in this case lead to one, indisputable conclusion: that Section 4 of H.B. 481, by prohibiting a woman from terminating her pregnancy upon the detection of a fetal heartbeat, constitutes a pre-viability abortion ban,” Jones wrote in his decision. “As this ban directly conflicts with binding Supreme Court precedent (i.e., the core holdings in Roe, Casey, and their progeny) and thereby infringes upon a woman’s constitutional right to obtain an abortion prior to viability, the Court is left with no other choice but to declare it unconstitutional.”

“It is in the public interest, and is this court’s duty, to ensure constitutional rights are protected,” Jones continued.

The suit, SisterSong v. Kemp, was brought by advocacy groups and abortion providers including Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Georgia.

“This win is tremendous, and [it] also makes a very bold statement,” said Monica Simpson, the executive director of the suit’s lead plaintiff SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, in a statement. “No one should have to live in a world where their body and reproductive decision-making is controlled by the state. And we will continue to work to make sure that is never a reality in Georgia or anywhere else.”

In a statement to TIME, the office of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said: “We will appeal the Court’s decision. Georgia values life, and we will keep fighting for the rights of the unborn.”

The controversial law faced widespread criticism, including from several famed filmmakers and actors who threatened to pull out of Atlanta’s multi-billion dollar film industry if the law was enacted. The law was initially going to take effect at the start of 2020, but Jones placed a preliminary injunction blocking the law in October 2019.

“The district court blocked Georgia’s abortion ban, because it violates over 50 years of Supreme Court precedent and fails to trust women to make their own personal decisions,” said Sean J. Young, the legal director of the ACLU of Georgia, in a statement. “This case has always been about one thing: letting her decide. It is now up to the state to decide whether to appeal this decision and prolong this lawsuit.”

Monday’s ruling came the same day a federal judge temporarily blocked a bill in Tennessee that would ban most abortions after the detection of fetal cardiac activity. At least seven other states passed similarly restrictive abortion laws in 2019, all of which are currently stopped in the courts.

By Madeleine Carlisle on July 14, 2020 at 02:34PM