Today's GOP Fuckery

When Greg Abbott signed the Texas bill criminalizing abortion - and monetizing the enforcement provisions by essentially deputizing every vigilante schmuck with a hankerin' to play Wyatt Earp while putting $10,000 in his pocket - he was asked about not making provisions for rape and incest.

He side-stepped the question, and pivoted straight into feigning an angry rant about the terribleness of rape and how he was going to put a stop to rape in Texas and it's the rapists committing rape who need to be stopped before they can rape the rape victims who are raped and raped and raped.

And suddenly the question about forcing a woman to bear a child against her will, having been forced to get impregnated against her will is completely lost in the shuffle.

MIke DeWine tried to pull the same shit in Ohio.

Ohio Capitol Journal:

10-year-old rape victim apparently not among Ohio Gov. DeWine’s ‘most vulnerable’ needing protection

Gov. Mike DeWine spends a lot of time jawing about his concern for protecting the “most vulnerable” Ohioans whenever he signs a draconian law attacking the bodily autonomy of others.

But as we learned this week, a 10-year-old Ohio rape victim was forced to travel to Indiana for an abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned national abortion rights, and within hours 

On Monday three days after the Supreme Court issued its groundbreaking decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, took a call from a colleague, a child abuse doctor in Ohio.

Hours after the Supreme Court action, the Buckeye state had outlawed any abortion after six weeks. Now this doctor had a 10-year-old patient in the office who was six weeks and three days pregnant.

Could Bernard help?

Though Indiana lawmakers are poised to further restrict or ban abortion in mere weeks with a special session July 25, for now, the procedure still is legal there. And so, the Star reported, the girl soon was on her way to Indiana to Bernard’s care.

Asked Wednesday about the law he signed preventing this 10-year-old rape victim from having a choice over her pregnancy in Ohio, DeWine could only stutter and stammer through a political hack non-answer:

“Yeah, first of all, I have no more information than you do or anybody does. Reading in the, in the paper, it came came as you know, from a story out of, out of Indiana from, from a doctor over there. This is a horrible, horrible tragedy, you know, for a 10-year-old to be assaulted, 10-year-old to be raped, you know, as a father and grandfather, it just, it’s just gut-wrenching to even, even, even think about it. I assume that the doctor has reported this. I assume that if she was treated at an emergency room, you know, these are all mandatory reporters. So I’m assuming that this has been referred to children’s services, I assume has also been referred to local whatever the local law enforcement agency is. We have out there a, obviously a rapist. We have someone who is dangerous and we have someone who should be picked up and locked up forever. And again, I don’t, not knowing all the facts of the case, I’m just assuming that that process has has in fact, has in fact, been been followed. [sic]”

Everyone knows that the rape of a 10-year-old is horrible. That’s not the question.

The question is for DeWine to explain why he thinks he is justified in creating law to force child rape victims to carry pregnancies from their rapists. On that subject, DeWine’s silence rang loud.

DeWine would inflict the emotional and physical violence of forced birth-giving on child rape victims, but won’t take responsibility for his own actions.

This is a most disgusting form of cowardice.

Either DeWine has the courage of his convictions and explains why children must undergo this suffering he’s causing; or he’s a coward.

From his answer, it’s apparent he’s so unconcerned — while this has made national and international news all week — he hasn’t bothered to seek out the facts of the case.

Compare his current posture to the rhetoric DeWine deployed when he signed the law that caused this situation:

“The essential function of government is to protect the most vulnerable among us, those who don’t have a voice,” DeWine said.

If a 10-year-old rape victim does not rank among Ohio’s most vulnerable, I shudder to imagine DeWine’s conception of vulnerability.

This is just the beginning. This was one example that came within days of the Supreme Court’s ruling and the enactment of Ohio Republicans’ law.

Over the coming years, there will be many more. We will report on each story we can, and they will all be heartbreaking to read, I’m sure, and devastating to everyday Ohioans’ lives.

This is what happens when long-standing freedoms are ripped away from Americans by extremist politicians and politically motivated, activist courts.

This is what happens when politicians choose to be blind to the nuances and complexity of life, and instead stake out radical, absolutist positions, and then give those positions the power of law.

Ohio Republicans are planning to move legislation next that will ban nearly all abortions, again with no exceptions for rape or incest.

The sponsor says she has the votes in the General Assembly as well as the “full support” of DeWine.

State Rep. Jean Schmidt doesn’t know yet, she said, whether they will make this new, even more extreme law before or after the November General Election. She’s called forced pregnancy for rape victims “an opportunity.”

Ohio Republicans and Mike DeWine may be fine with making our state an example of heartless cruelty before the eyes of the nation and the world.

I think it’s sick and monstrous.

But that’s the law they made and threaten to make worse, so they don’t get to shirk responsibility and accountability for their actions.

Each heartbreaking story of suffering and pain falls squarely on their heads.

And isn't it weird - but no, not weird at all - that Republicans always come down on the side of retribution.

No matter what happens, their first inclination is to punish. Everybody gets punished for everything - the perp and victim and everybody else - punishing everybody means nobody can criticize us for playing favorites.

I think that grows out of Daddy State Awareness, Rule 6:

Total criminalization: if we're all guilty, then you can't hold me responsible without the risk of exposing your own culpability.

So it follows that if everybody's guilty of something, then everybody can be punished at any time for any reason. Or for no reason at all.

And if punishment is the order of the day, then everybody is under threat at all times, which makes everybody a little less likely to step outa line.

Today's Crazy Brits

Our cousins across the pond are often just as screwy as we are.

It has to be good that they're showing signs of coming out of their own version of this weird 21st century political delirium, as Boris Johnson has submitted his resignation to parliament.

Jonathan Pie

The Atlantic - David Frum, asking a very pertinent question: (pay wall)

Why Won’t Republicans Act Like Britain’s Tories?

Boris Johnson’s party ditched its dysfunctional leader, yet the GOP remains in thrall to the much more dangerous Donald Trump.

The head of government is caught in a series of scandals. The scandals are not necessarily so important in themselves. Many of them involve purely personal misconduct. But if exposed, they would shock public opinion and threaten the leader’s hold on power. So he lies and lies and lies again. He mobilizes his cabinet and staff to lie for him. And when the truth does finally catch up with him, he tries to brazen things out. The people voted for him. He has a mandate. He won’t go willingly—and he threatens his colleagues that if they try to force him out, he will pull down his administration and his party with him.

The British media are very fond of comparisons between outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson and ex-President Donald Trump. But the political convulsion that toppled Johnson looks a lot more like the uproar that led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton in the late ’90s than anything in Trump’s record.

Johnson ignored ethics rules and even the law of the land. He disregarded the British value of shared sacrifice in times of hardship by attending parties prohibited by anti-COVID health orders. He was routinely unreliable and untruthful. But Johnson did not attack the constitutional structure of his country.

Johnson will leave office for much the same reason, and in much the same way, as his predecessors Theresa May, David Cameron, and Tony Blair left it: because he lost the confidence of his party. The Conservatives won an 80-seat majority in the general election of December 2019. Johnson claimed that majority as his own personal accomplishment. His resignation in July 2022 confirms the norm of British democracy: Any mandate conferred by the voters belongs to the majority party in Parliament, not to the party leader.

Britain faces many troubles post-Johnson: the accumulating economic harm wrought by the decision to quit the European Union; the threat of Scottish withdrawal from the United Kingdom; the challenge of maintaining peace and an open border between EU-member Ireland in the south and non-EU Ulster in the north. It faces those problems with its system of government in essentially the same working order as it was before Johnson gained the prime ministership.

This outlook is very different for the United States post-Trump. Like Johnson, Trump used every available legal means to hold power as long as he could. Unlike Johnson, Trump then turned to illegal means. He forbade his administration to cooperate in the transition to its elected successor. He pressured state governments to violate their own laws and void their election, replacing their democratically chosen presidential electors with stooges selected by state Republican parties.

When all else failed, Trump fomented a violent attack on the Capitol to interrupt the last formality of the presidential election. Trump hoped that he could intimidate his vice president into violating the law to overturn the election. And if the vice president failed to comply, Trump seemed willing either to put the vice president to flight or even to allow his supporters to kill him—presumably so that some replacement could overturn the election certification in the vice president’s place.

That was terrible, but what has happened since is, if possible, worse. In the immediate aftermath of Trump’s attempted putsch, many leaders in Trump’s party voiced condemnation—though even then, most refused to hold him to account by the constitutional means available: impeachment and removal. In the months since January 6, 2021, Republican leaders have declined to enforce any accountability. Instead they have gradually submitted to his demand that their party protect him from the law and pretend to believe his excuses for his plot to seize the presidency by violence: that there was something defective about the election he lost by 8 million votes—even as his party in fact gained seats in the House and Senate.

Few Republican leaders actually believe Trump’s crazy claims. Many are making behind-the-scenes efforts to sabotage his renomination in 2024. But they won’t stand up and be counted—and if he beats them in party primaries, they have declared in advance that they will submit to his leadership and try their best to return him to the presidency he tried to steal after the 2020 election.

That’s a crisis of democracy.

The British face nothing like it. As severe as their national problems are, their institutions proved more than robust in the face of Johnson’s transgressions. Johnson, for his part, never fundamentally tested the British constitutional system: All he wanted from office was a good time and an easy job.

On this side of the Atlantic, things look much darker. The United States had mechanisms to deal with Trump’s attempted coup. He could have been removed from office that very night by the mechanism of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. He could have been convicted and disqualified from ever holding office again by conviction in an impeachment trial.

Unlike Johnson’s party, Trump’s party protected him to the end from accountability for his crimes against the Constitution. With rare exceptions, his party protects him still. The only president in U.S. history to attempt a violent seizure of power remains the front-runner for his party’s nomination in 2024.

The British today can expect a return to the normal problems of governance, albeit aggravated by the self-harm of Brexit but otherwise with their parliamentary democracy intact. For Americans post-Trump, democracy itself remains the question on every election ballot.

Today's Tweet

Create the problem, let the problem create victims, and then pretend it's all the fault of the victims you've created.

Your daily reminder: not a single state that is restricting abortion access provides paid family leave for new parents.

— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) July 6, 2022

Go Nerds

Technology (along with some pretty fucked up policy) got us into this mess, and technology (along with policy that just has to be a little less fucked up) will have to help us get out of it.

TED-Ed - Tierney Thys and Christian Sardet

LEAF BRANCH COMPOST CUTINASIS

It's The Climate Change, Stupid

Amanpour & Co - with Dr Kristie Ebi

Because there's this thing called Conservation Of Energy, some really bad shit has to happen (has to happen) because of all the energy we're artificially putting into the global climate system. 

Mother Earth has to do something with all that energy, so we get the horrendous effects of killer heat waves, and killer tornado clusters, and killer hurricanes, and killer wildfires, and killer floods, and killer mudslides, and and and.

In fact, it's been proved that the killer heat wave that slammed the Pacific NW last year would not have been possible without the aggravating circumstances provided by the Anthropogenic Global Warming that's driving Climate Change.

It would have been impossible

BTW: Wanna bitch about "immigrants"? Do something to counteract Climate Change, and make it less imperative for those folks to leave their own countries in the first place.

COVID-19 Update

USA Totals

Cases:  87,899,721  

Deaths:  1,014,427

Axios:

Pfizer to begin testing universal coronavirus vaccines

Pfizer and its partner BioNTech plan to start clinical trials of pan-coronavirus vaccines in the second half of the year, BioNTech officials said in an investor presentation on Wednesday.

Driving the news:

The company said it wants to provide "durable variant protection," according to Reuters, which first reported the news.

Why it matters:

Creating a vaccine that works against a variety of coronaviruses, including COVID-19, represents a holy grail — particularly as new variants threaten to outrun our current arsenal of vaccines.

State of play:

• Universal vaccines have been studied with limited success for years, but they are gaining renewed investment and research interest. A pan-coronavirus vaccine, being developed at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, was planned for a Phase 1 clinical trial in April, CNN reported.
• The NIH announced this week the start of a Phase 1 clinical trial to test the safety of a universal flu vaccine candidate, as well as its ability to prompt immune responses.
• "The scientific community is making progress on this pressing global health priority," said NIAID director Anthony Fauci in a statement.

Be smart:

As Axios' Caitlin Owens wrote last year, some experts say making a universal coronavirus vaccine may be easier than making a universal flu vaccine, especially given all that's been learned over the last two years.

Today's Reddit

Just when you're thinking you've got it made.

Today's American Taliban

Let me just say up front that I don't care about the "monument".

Channel 11 - Atlanta

Justin King - Beau Of the Fifth Column

The part that bugs me is the tendency for cynically manipulative politicians and media attention whores to glom onto some oddball conspiracy fantasy - laced with phony religious fervor - to amp up the mob so they go around blowing shit up.

How is this any different?

And before you get all False Equivalency on me, there's a huge difference between taking down phony symbols - works that (eg) symbolize racial oppression while dressed up to look like "a proud, honorable heritage" - and the zealotry-driven wanton destruction of artifacts that depict real history.

The decision to remove a statue of Robert E Lee may have some very nuanced implications involving the representation of history - which has to include the history of how History is annotated and taught, so I have reservations, but I think I have to come down on the side of not lionizing someone who fought against everything this country is supposed to stand for.

Blowing up 1500-year-old statues of Buddha was just a shitty thing to do. And knowing what we know about authoritarian assholes like the Taliban, there's a far probability that it was done as a gesture to curry favor with the boss - "Look how well I've proved my loyalty" - as well as an exercise in power and domination of the people in the Bamiyan Valley.

So blowing up the Georgia Guide Stones was (IMHO) a grandstanding thing. Somebody just wanted to show how dedicated they are to "the cause" - whatever the fuck that is.

Axios:

Investigation underway after Georgia Guidestones bombed

The GBI is searching for a suspect and Georgia is down one roadside oddity after someone bombed the Georgia Guidestones — sometimes known as "American Stonehenge" — early Wednesday morning.

Why it matters:

The Guidestones were built in Elberton in 1980, and have since become the subject of a range of conspiracy theories.

Former Republican gubernatorial candidate Kandiss Taylor called the stones "Satanic evil" and pledged to issue an executive order to destroy them if elected.She praised the news of the blast on social media.

What's happening:

• One of the structure's "wings" appeared destroyed by the blast and the capstone piece was damaged, Christopher Kubas, executive vice president of the Elberton Granite Association, which manages the monument, told reporters Wednesday.The remaining panels were demolished by authorities for safety reasons.
• The GBI released surveillance video of the blast, showing a silver car speeding away.

Catch up quick:

Carved into the stones are a series of messages, known as "guides for humanity," in eight languages. An unknown man with the pseudonym R.C. Christian commissioned them.Kubas said they're a feat of granite engineering.

Threat level:

The Guidestones have been previously vandalized, Kubas said, which prompted the security camera installation.He estimates the stones have drawn in more than 20,000 visitors annually from around the globe.

Today's Radicalization

Carlson's commentary is another not-too-veiled threat.

He's saying it's wrong for women to criticize men, and that if they don't stop, young men will feel justified in murdering more people.

He is, in effect, encouraging the nutballs - it's basically a variation on Stochastic Terrorism.

This is far more than a hint. The Press Poodles need to get this shit straight, and start calling it what it is.

Newsweek:

Tucker Carlson Suggests Shootings Are Result of Lectures on Male Privilege

Tucker Carlson suggested on his Tuesday show that women lecturing men about male privilege is a contributing factor to mass shootings in the United States.

His comments came after the mass shooting at a July 4th parade in Highland Park, Illinois, that saw at least seven people killed and more than two dozen people injured. Following the shooting, police arrested 22-year-old Robert E. Crimo III as the main suspect and charged him with seven counts of first-degree murder.

During his show, Carlson also claimed that poor mental health is a significant facet of why mass shootings happened and said that there were many people like Crimo across America.

"Look at Robert 'Bobby' Crimo, would you sell a gun to that guy, does he seem like a nut case? Of course, he does," Carlson said. "So why didn't anyone raise an alarm? Maybe it is because he didn't stand out. Maybe it is because there are a lot of young men in America who suddenly look and act like this guy. That is not an attack, it is just true."

He added: "Like Crimo, they inhabit that solitary fantasy world of social media, porn and video games."

Carlson then went on to claim these same men may be high on drugs and angry because they believe their lives will be worse than their parents'.

"They are high on government-endorsed weed, 'smoke some more, it is good for you.' They are numbed by the endless psychotropic drugs that are handed out in every school in the country by crackpots posing as counselors. Of course, they are angry, they know that their lives will not be better than their parents', they will be worse. That is all but guaranteed, they know that. They are not that stupid." he said.

"And yet the authorities in their lives, mostly women, never stop lecturing them about their so-called privilege. 'You are male, you are privileged.' Imagine that, try and imagine an unhealthier, unhappier life than that. So a lot of young men in America are going nuts," Carlson continued.

"Are you surprised? By the way, a shockingly large number of them have been prescribed psychotropic drugs by their doctors, SSRIs or anti-depressants. That would include quite a few mass shooters."

Carlson also questioned why the authorities did not act more on the red flags they had seen from Crimo, prior to his alleged actions in the July 4 attack.

Carlson then played a snippet from a press conference held Tuesday regarding the shooting. Deputy Chief Christopher Covelli of the Lake County sheriff's office and the Lake County major crimes task force highlighted the instances where police encountered Crimo.

He said in April 2019, police were contacted by someone who had learned a week prior, Crimo had attempted to die by suicide. Police then spoke with Crimo and his parents and the matter was passed over to mental health professionals.

In the second instance, in September 2019, Crimo had a large collection of knives confiscated by the police after saying he "was going to kill everyone."

And also too:

It's not a stretch to see this as a pretty standard conflation of manipulative disinformation - an attempt to skew the issue in a way that gets people riled up and confused, and keeps them stuck in the boiler.

Carlson is taking the standard tropes, ie: "It's the mental health", together with "The doctors and the schools don't know what they're doing", together with "We should be enforcing the Red Flag Laws we have on the books instead of passing all these new laws" in order to get it all back to that comfortable stasis that makes it easy to sell dick pills and panty liners, so the rubes actually finance their own subjugation.

And that brings us back around to the point of the exercise, which is - as always - to tear down good government and keep people on edge until a critical mass is achieved, at which point it all explodes into an overwhelming popular demand for Daddy State rule. "We are ungovernable - save us, Daddy - please."

Today's Neighbors

Posted on Twitter, so grains of salt all 'round, but does anyone really feel inclined to think this didn't happen because, "Hey - America is just too good a place for this shit to go on"?

First, there's this:

And then there's the bit about (paraphrasing) "your daughter is a slut who's trying to tempt my darling innocent boy, blah blah blah.

And we can overlook the glaring grammar fails, cuz the best part is the not-so-thinly-veiled threat at the end:

"...back to a reservation with your people. For the well-being of you and your family."

There is no hate quite like Christian love.