• 1 Post
  • 167 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 6th, 2023

help-circle


  • I think this is a civil prosecution like Texas’ abortion ban. So say you and a friend of yours live in Texas. Your friend was raped and just found out that she’s 7 weeks pregnant. You help her get to a blue state for an abortion.

    At some point, your friend tells her mother who happens to tell me. I sue you and your friend to collect thousands of dollars.

    Now even if I’m unsuccessful, you still need to deal with the time, money, and stress that a civil trial brings. And if you’re found to be in violation of that law, you could be out thousands of dollars. This is all intended to make people reluctant to help pregnant women. It’s a cruel law designed to scare people into being crueler to others.


  • Also, McConnell is in the Senate. To win a Senate seat, you need to appeal to your entire state. This has a moderating effect on politicians. You can’t win in most states by saying “Trump really won in 2020. We should hang all Democrats and seize the Jewish Space Laser!”

    Meanwhile, in the House, you just need to win a small section of the state. This section is likely heavily gerrymandered so that you’re safe no matter what. In some of these areas, “Impeach Biden on the first day for the crime of pushing Trump out of office” actually works and can get those people into the House.

    McCarthy needs to juggle these crazies along with more rational Republicans (that being a relative term). He could work across the aisle - teaming Democrats up with more moderate Republicans to get things done, but he doesn’t want to do this. Instead, he wants to only have Republicans involved which means he needs the votes of the crazies. This gives them more power than they should have.


  • I still think that they really wanted to impeach Biden three times. This would “prove” that Biden is more corrupt than Trump. Ignore that none of the Biden impeachments would have been about any actual crime beyond “we don’t like that he’s President - we wanted the other guy!”

    Of course, with McCarthy’s razor thin margins, he couldn’t manage this, but he’s feeling increased pressure to get one impeachment in. This way the Republicans can say “well, yes, it was political but this just proves that the two Trump impeachments were political also so the Democrats are worse!” (Again, ignoring that Trump actually committed crimes and Biden didn’t.)


  • And in the case of this state Supreme Court Justice, it’s not even “get you fired.” Republicans know that their firing effort will fail, but until the state Senate holds the hearing the Justice isn’t allowed to rule on cases.

    So Republicans aren’t even firing this justice, but putting her in limbo until the cases that the Republicans want are decided. Only after those cases are decided in the Republicans’ favor will they drop the impeachment charges.

    Of course, if this is successful, all they need to do is impeach justices to ensure favorable results any time a case comes up that threatens Republican power. Impeach enough left leaning justices and the Republicans could even ensure a hard right verdict.




  • The problem with setting the age limit too low is that people of that age range might not feel represented.

    To give an example, I’m 48. One of my upcoming concerns is retirement. Will it be able to afford to retire? Will I need to work part time after “retiring” just to survive?

    If every politician in a position of power was too young, retirement might not seem to them to be an important issue. After all, when you’re 30, retirement seems forever away. They could enact policies that are great for people under 40 but devastating to people approaching retirement.

    That’s why, while I definitely think politicians like McConnell and Feinstein should have retired long ago, I’m leery about setting too low of a forced retirement age.





  • They do have the First Amendment right to march and wave their flags around. Now, if all major political parties quickly denounced them and the police treated them as the potential threats that they are, then their “peaceful marches” would be ridiculed and they would be driven back into the shadows.

    The bigger problem isn’t that they have a First Amendment right to march. It’s that one of the two major political parties watches them match and says “these guys have some good ideas.” Instead of being driven into the shadows of society, they are being given positons of power. And we’ve seen what happens when Nazis are given power.


  • I feel the same way. I’m tolerant of many different opinions. Basically, as long as you’re not hurting yourself or other people, go for it.

    But when someone calls for the death of someone else, I draw the line. I’m Jewish and, sadly, dealt with Nazis before. Back in high school (about 30 years ago), I started talking with a kid. This kid (unbeknownst to me when we started talking) worshipped Hitler. He told me outright “the only thing Hitler did wrong was not finishing the job.” Yes, the kid knew I’m Jewish and no he wasn’t "just being edgy.

    Now, I’ve always been an easy going person. I’m not prone to violence at all. However, when this kid essentially told me that my family and I should be killed, I lost it. A friend of mine had to hold me back because I was going to punch Nazi kid in his face.

    Unfortunately, these people fell comfortable being open about their Nazi views. That’s because the Republicans have decided to drop all dogwhistles and fully support the bigots of the country in their goal of oppressing anyone even slightly different.