Good that this comes to light, though I'm sure the conspiracy theorists will never be convinced. But it's good to take away lies from the equation.
I do think Biden is the wrong candidate to run for president though. He seems more and more erratic, confusing Mitterand with Macron and Kohl with Merkel (uhm... Not even the same gender!). And his unwavering support for Netanyahu...
I'm really worried about this because obviously Trump is worse. I'm not American so obviously I have no say in this but I worry about this for the effects on the whole world in terms of geopolitical stability, climate etc. But having "Not Trump" as your only selling point is not a good bet IMO. Is America really not ready for a candidate that's a bit younger and actually able to step up to the plate?
Yeah. The "I'm just not voting" (fuckin atrocious stupid idea) "Biden is bad" (he's not) "Gaza is all Biden's fault" (it's not) shills are so noisy, that it took me a while (and reading Ezra Klein and seeing Jon Stewart talking about it) to cotton on to the idea that there is actually a valuable point there.
I honestly don't know what to do. I'm going to vote for the Democrat in the general election obviously, because I don't want the end of democracy and an apocalypse in the rest of the world any more than anyone else does, but I wish I could see some sort of realistic way for the Democratic nominee to be someone else. I'm just about to vote in the primary but that will obviously do nothing at all to influence things for real.
Of course Gaza is not Biden's fault, absolutely not. I'm not saying that. And I'm very much a 'leftie' (much more left than the democrats are in the US in fact, I would be more like Bernie).
However he could certainly be a bit less unwavering in his support for Netanyahu who is really committing atrocities. If I could vote in the US I would still vote for him, but with a heavy heart. I'm sure he's not happy with what is happening in Gaza but I would prefer a president who would not be afraid to speak up. And I'm really starting to worry about his mental state as I mentioned.
I have no ideas either, sadly... But it would be so nice if someone fresh would actually get a chance.
What you could do of course is vote for someone else in the primaries. After all, it will still be a democrat, it won't affect the outcome of the presidential election and at least your voice of dissent is counted somewhere. If a lot of people do this, maybe some bells will ring at the DNC.
Keep voting against fascism, and eventually, if we are able to hold that line, the old guard will die off and we can get some real change. Ex: Dianne Feinstein, she's gone now and we're going to get Adam Schiff who's better, or hopefully Katie Porter who's even better than Schiff.
Do what you can to people on board with better voting systems like ranked choice voting, approval voting, anything that gets us away from first past the post bullshit. Use it for game night, use it in the office, etc. Get it into the mainstream public conscious. Until enough people start asking why we don't use it for elections.
…or rather — fucking money…while every branch of the government is either in on it, or lacks any spine.
Citizens United needs to be overturned and we need to stop electing corrupt/corruptible pieces of shit, and laws actually need to be enforced without it taking years or decades.
Vaccines don't work. Global warming is a lie. The United States is not a democracy. Babies are too small to be seen with the naked eye and can be frozen and thawed out. Biden is corrupt because Vladimir Putin said so. Am I missing anything?
Personally I think the whole thing is overblown. Unless I missed something, nobody said anything about banning IVF; they just put some scary biblical language into an otherwise very reasonable decision about damages for a guy who broke into a clinic and accidentally destroyed some embryos and now is on the hook financially. Pro-choice people saw the language and flipped out, a little understandably given the current political climate, and the media ran with the story, but I think it’s pretty unlikely that anyone is actually trying to ban or regulate IVF in any way. (maybe just 1-2 total wackos who just saw the story and jumped to ban it just from being wired for anti-woman-ness and not knowing IVF from IUD)
If I remember correctly, hospitals in that state had to stop performing IVF as a consequence in order to avoid being at risk of violating the law. Classifying embryos as children has really important consequences.
My point was that nobody in government said anything about banning IVF or coming after IVF doctors. That was just extrapolation from what the court was talking about, in the course of making ultimately to me a perfectly sensible decision about the facts of the case they were looking at. Right? Like I say, unless I missed something.
I don't think the hospitals "had to" stop performing IVF. I think they came up with that as an extrapolation from this one ruling.
I do think it's "sensible" in the current political climate for the hospitals to stop IVF until things are clarified, and I do think it's an indictment of the general anti-abortion-to-the-point-of-negligent-homicide feeling in the Republican party that they felt they had to do that. But nobody actually wants to ban IVF, as far as I know. That was my point. I think the state is probably backpedaling hard now to try to figure out how to undo this shitstorm and make it clear that they support IVF without looking "weak" on abortion somehow.
I'm not trying to take them off the hook for anything. Just trying to clarify, that's all.
"The decisions by Alabama Fertility Services and Mobile Infirmary come a day after the University of Alabama at Birmingham health system said in a statement that it was pausing IVF treatments so it could evaluate whether its patients or doctors could face criminal charges or punitive damages."
So it is stopping IVF in this state and will have untold repercussions based on the ruling "Unborn children are 'children'" which has potentially complicated and unpredictable outcomes. You are entitled to your opinion of course but I think you are quite wrong about this being overblown. It is huge for many.
"More than 9 million babies have been born using assisted reproductive technologies like in vitro fertilization. "
"A cycle of in vitro fertilization can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $25,000"
For people currently using IVF, this is probably a very stressful time.
The Arizona supreme court said, said, that frozen 12 cell embryos are "babies"
Women using IVF to try and have an actual baby are told the jar of frozen cell clots are all babies and medical professionals will now not touch them for fear of loony nuts sending police into hospitals.
Technically, a human ovum is 0.12mm in diameter... I have a 3D printer nozzle with a 0.10mm pitch, and it's still visible to the naked eye (from up close), just slightly smaller than a 0201 SMD resistor.
OK, sure, there is no illuminati or whatever—I'll give you that.
But US democracy is a very troubled one. From local to federal level, it has critical flaws and little to no mechanisms against abuses. Education required for informed consent is tragic, the economy still depends on brain import instead of organic growth. Only far right has high turnout and so gets what they vote for. If I were to guess it's because of religious factions maintaining coherence and motivation, of course aside from active voter suppression. Can't have an effective democracy when half the population doesn't vote. 2020 was historic because "only" a third of the population didn't vote.
Various indices measuring democracy show a gradual decline, too, and they already tend to be slightly biased towards exaggerating US democraticity because of all the propaganda. Speaking of which, decades of Red Scare (and nuclear panic) poisoned free speech against left-wing concepts and yet utterly fail now that Russia is a bigger threat than ever. (Including nuclear—we're mere 90 seconds to midnight.)
The Justice Department said this week that informant Alexander Smirnov invented a story about $5 million bribes paid to Joe and Hunter Biden and is also "peddling new lies."
