republicans want to make 'disturbing them' a capital offense and yet somehow democrats are supposed to be the sensitive whiners

wait lemme look something up

hey what the fuck

"But while Vance views our feline friends as a medieval witch-hunter would — as a sign that a woman is dangerously independent and therefore evil — dog owners should not feel safe from the ire of Vance and his friends in the uterus-obsessed MAGA movement. Vance wrote the forward to "Dawn's Early Light: Taking Back Washington To Save America" by Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation. Roberts is one of the leaders of Project 2025...

Like Vance, Roberts is outraged that women have goals and interests outside of making babies early and often. The book has been delayed until after the election, but Media Matters has a galley copy, which features Roberts raving about the evils of birth control, in-vitro fertilization, and yes, even pets. Roberts laments that they allow women to feel that "having a child seem(s) like an optional and not natural result of having sex." In the book, Roberts spits venom at dog parks, which he sees as a decadent concession to those he believes won't "give up childish things, and live in the real world" by having kids. Dog parks are a result of "the antifamily culture shaping legislation, regulation, and enforcement throughout our sprawling government," he snarls."

From an article by Amanda Marcotte for Salon. Link: https://www.salon.com/2024/08/16/jd-vance-isnt-just-out-to-get-cat-ladies--his-weird-plans-target-dog-people-and-grandmas-too/

There's little that the overwhelming majority of Americans can agree on, but one of those things is "We like dogs."

You know, I'm gonna say it.

Aggressively moralizing people for having a pet dog or cat is WEIRD. IT'S REALLY FUCKING WEIRD.

And refencing those first 3 posts, Kristi Noem shot one of her dogs rather than handle it responsibly and train it - then included the story of doing so in her book claiming it was a normal rural thing to do. It's not.

https://abcnews.go.com/538/kristi-noem-blamed-shooting-dog-realities-rural-life/story?id=110027836

Y'all I did NOT know this about Harris, and I think it's really critical that we all listen and understand as we approach this election. Video at the end.

This creator's video describes how progressive Harris was as a prosecutor -- actively going against the grain to the point she was accused of being soft on crime. Accused of being a social worker, not a prosecutor. She calls it being smart on crime. She's pushing for systemic changes to give real pathways to reintegrate incarcerated folks back into society and prevent their past from continuing to haunt them moving forward.

"Kamala's a cop" is a catchy dismissive response, but this kind of reform is ESSENTIAL to work towards a present and future that treats incarcerated people with value.

I fell for it in 2020 and have thought "Kamala's a cop" since - and I'm sobered by the realization that (you guessed it!) I'm not immune to propaganda.

A better system only follows liberal democracy, because library democracy allows for exploration of better systems. If authoritarianism takes hold, it will not allow for the exploration of better systems. We will have to fight tooth and nail just to try to get back to liberal democracy, and I suspect we could not achieve it in our lifetimes.

Harris isn't perfect. But she's a hell of a lot better than many leftists have led me to believe. Don't let perfection be the enemy of good. Don't let perfection be the enemy of harm reduction.

We can either help elect Trump and usher in authoritarian fascism, or we can help defeat him and pull things back in the direction we want to go. Not liking the choices doesn't absolve you from participating and doing the most good you can with the options available.

I'll link the original video in the replies. The original video has captions if you need them.

Due diligence note for my followers: I don’t have the brain energy to find and link sources for all the vid-maker’s info, but his own cites should be good enough for you to follow up if you want, which I encourage. Most of this was stuff I did know, often from 2020 when it first came onto the stage, as it were, but I actually do encourage LOOKING INTO IT. Information literacy!!!

She/her also personally fought against transwomen in prison seeking gender affirmation surgery...

Here’s an article that gives more details on the story, and what Harris said about it.  The key points:

(*For the record, Harris finished her time as AG and became a Senator shortly after this agreement was reached, so it’s someone else’s job now to enforce it.) 

The thing to keep in mind here is that, as Attorney General, Kamala Harris couldn’t wave her hand and have everything in the entire California Department of Justice go exactly as she wanted it--and she won’t be able to as Vice President, either.  We currently have a president who thinks that’s how it works, and we’re damned lucky he’s wrong.  

She had (and will have to) work with large number of people who hold different views.  (Another article I read said that the California Department of Justice, which she ran as AG, employs about 4,800 people--that’s a lot of different views.)  If she had refused to back the Department of Corrections in their case, she would have alienated people whose cooperation she needed to be able to rely on.  (If she even had the option of not backing them and staying AG--I’m not sure how it works, exactly.)  Even people who agreed with her about the specific matter might have disapproved of her hanging her subordinates out to dry.  (Another thing our current president does constantly--notice how Harris isn’t saying that the person in her office who actually wrote these briefs is a bad guy that she barely knew.)

So here’s what actually happened when Kamala Harris “fought against transwomen in prison seeking gender affirmation surgery”:

If you’ve had a job, you’ve probably been in the position of having to carry out a policy that you don’t agree with.  Your choices are to quit your job in protest or stay and argue that the policy should change.  If you pick option B, you still have to follow the policy while you’re working to change it--again, just about the only person in the world who doesn’t know this is Donald J. Trump, because he’s never had a real job where he answered to anybody.  

What this incident shows is that Kamala Harris is accustomed to working in a system where she doesn’t always get her own way, and that she knows how to lose the battle to win the war.  As VP, she’s going to need those skills--especially if the Republicans keep the Senate, but even if the Democrats sweep everything in November, we’re notoriously bad at all pulling in the same direction.  We’ve had about enough of the “I’m taking my ball and going home” style of leadership.  

Bringing back this from 2020, because I’ve been seeing the rhetoric machine spinning up again.

The law, especially in a democracy, is a slow and frustrating thing. Lawyers are sometimes put in positions where they are presenting arguments for something they may disagree with.

The reason why a lawyer would agree to do this often comes down to the political theory that we must rigorously and honestly test ideas, and that requires cogent emphatic arguments from both sides.

It’s easy to say in this case that the correct result should be obvious, But we can’t just design a system that says “oh but you can skip the full legal process for stuff that is clearly right/wrong”

BECAUSE THEN THE PEOPLE WHO DISAGREE WITH YOU TAKE THAT IDEA AND USE IT TO PUT YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS IN JAIL OR EXECUTE YOU.

So yes, we apply this really onerous process to things that seem really obvious because we must apply the same standard to everything.

When you don’t you get shit like the current Supreme Court.

And to everyone who says, "Well, she should have just ignored the law, followed our her morals, and done the Right Thing!"

Okay.

Remember Kim Davis, that (now former) county clerk in Kentucky who, in 2015, refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses because of her religious beliefs?

You're basically saying that she was right and legally in the right to do so.

It's tempting, isn't it, to disregard laws and principles because you feel know that it's the right thing to do?

But ignoring the law, pretending you're not bound by it, yeah, that's what entitled, privileged people do. People who think the law doesn't apply to them.

The idea that there's an in-group whom the law protects, but doesn't bind, and an out-group whom the law binds but doesn't protect, is conservative, not progressive.

Since folks are exhausted from hearing about Project 2025 and Agenda 47, here are some reasons to feel hopeful about Harris

(It would be wonderful if folks could reblog this, a lot of people are feeling very discouraged right now and could use the morale boost!)

great, so now everyone who said they couldn't vote specifically for Joe Biden is gonna vote, right? like once there's another candidate who isn't donald trump and also isn't the guy you especially hate? no? you're still not gonna vote? no matter who it is? deeply unserious people

like if you're capable of saying, as is true, "no matter who gets picked they will be in support of the genocide in palestine," then you need to understand that the only logical conclusion is well, that means the genocide in palestine is not gonna be decided by the election. USA support for israel is too baked into the party-agnostic war machine system to be an electoral issue. that sucks, i hate it too, and it does mean that voting alone is not nearly enough if we want change.

however, other issues that still matter WILL be decided by the election, and your blank refusal to engage with that truth is childish and stupid. if you are folding your arms and saying you won't participate because it shouldn't be this way, while plenty of other people also hate the way things are but are willing to get dirt on their hands trying to help, you are privileged, naïve, & performative. consumerist-assed political outlook. fucks sake

God damn, people need to stop underestimating Biden.

How many times have we been through this? People rage that Biden isn't doing anything, even that he's complicit in such and such injustice, because he's not out there grandstanding using the specific language they want. Hell, I've been guilty of that myself.

And then it turns out that yet again, Biden has been quietly working away in the background, making deals and exploiting legal technicalities that most of his critics don't even know exist, to get results.

Every time people write Biden off, he comes back and surprises us. Because that age that everyone complains about? That is 80 years of experience. 80 years learning how the system works, who all the players are, how to come back from crushing defeat, and above all, how to get shit done.

I know I've been posting more about politics lately, and it's caused me to lose a chunk of followers.

But I'm a queer person with a degree in political science and its an election year. I'm old friends with several of my city council members. I've been to trainings on how to run elections. I spent my college years working for nonprofits (and being the world's worst canvasser). I'm close with more than one person who works for unions, and I have family members who work for government agencies.

I think about politics in a very pragmatic "I know how the sausage is made" kind of way. We're in a vice press, and there's only one way to release the pressure.

The revolution ain't coming. There is no one to save us but us.

So yeah, I'm going to be pissed if your answer is "let them tighten the vice -- there's no way out of the vice, it doesn't matter if they loosen or tighten it."

There's a difference, and anyone telling you otherwise is likely a psyop or someone who fell for a psyop. This literally happened before, and it's happening again.

Stop falling for it.

I really don't know who to vote for

You have two choices. And they aren't even close to each other.

(and Line 12 is misleading -- because Trump has literally stated he would like to help Israel "finish the job," while Biden is the only President of my lifetime to threaten withholding aid to Israel)

There is no third choice in American politics. You vote for the candidate who will do the least harm/most good, and you remember that it's not the end of your activism.

If you genuinely, truly, absolutely, cannot bring yourself to vote for the president of the united states, please just show up for elections anyway and vote for your congresspeople and local representatives.

Please.

Just.

If you cannot bring yourself to vote for the president because he's so disgusting of a candidate you morally cannot bring yourself to cross that line, then PLEASE vote for your congresspeople and local representatives who can block, defend, or present new bills, actions, acts, etc.

These are the people who can actually confirm or deny or impede horrendous acts when they happen.

Like. This is the bare minimum. If you cannot vote for the President, please just still vote for someone.

Change doesn't happen if you don't vote for the people willing to enact change.

The "smaller" elections often have the biggest impact on your actual life. Everything starts local and works its way outward, not the other way around. Every time a judge lets a cop off the hook for killing an unarmed person? You can vote those judges out. Those anti-queer laws in your home state? You can vote out the governor. Hate seeing your taxes raised for the sake of more cops while the schools and the roads go to shit? You can vote on those tax bills. "Blue" states aren't safer just because of who they vote for as president. It's because they voted for better governors, better judges, better laws.

You gotta do it, because fuckhead old conservatives are doing it. They've got bad ideas and they're willing to make them your problem. Your single vote might not count for much in the presidential election, but it absolutely has an impact on who is in charge in your particular town.

Your vote in a schoolboard election can mean the difference between electing someone who thinks public schools are good versus someone who reps Moms For Liberty and not so secretly wants to burn books that make them feel icky.

#States rights are more powerful than the federal government

#if you want your state to be safe for marginalized people

#then you need to vote progressive and tell everyone you know to vote progressive

Part of why the regressive bigots of the right wing have had their way is because they work at the local level, and have traditionally seen minimal actual pushback because so much attention is placed on the highest offices. There's actually so few of them, they literally ship the same handful of people across state lines for their shitty little bigot cry-fests, and more and more we're seeing that they shrivel and run away at any show of opposing numbers in local school boards and parents' meetings.

There's more of us than there are of them. Time to remind them of that on a fundamental level.

21 of 22 anti-LGBTQ+ bills dead in the Florida Legislature!!!

!!!! And here's a source!

Thanks so much for posting about this, OP

More from the article:

"At 2:27 p.m. on Friday, March 8, the Florida Legislature adjourned sine die. With this adjournment, 21 of 22 anti-LGBTQ+ bills were effectively killed, leaving an anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in education bill as the lone piece of legislation to pass this session. This session featured some of the most severe bills ever proposed against transgender individuals, all of these bills are now officially dead. LGBTQ+ activists in the state now have the rest of 2024 to regroup, with hopes that the November general election will yield results against a legislature that has spent two years targeting transgender individuals in every aspect of life.

The bills that have failed include H599, a bill that would have expanded "Don't Say Gay" policies to the workplace. It proposed banning government employees and any business with government contracts from sharing pronouns. Furthermore, it aimed to prohibit all nonprofits in the state from requiring education and training on LGBTQ+ issues—a significant issue for LGBTQ+ nonprofits, which would have been unable to operate within the state. That bill is now dead.

Another bill that died is H1639, a measure that would have mandated transgender individuals to have driver's license sex markers matching their sex assigned at birth. It also aimed to penalize insurance providers offering gender-affirming care coverage and would have required health insurance plans to cover conversion therapy for transgender individuals. Although this bill did not pass, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles has reinterpreted certain provisions that already exist, effectively banning changes to driver's license gender markers in the state and threatening individuals with accurate markers with charges of criminal fraud. However, challenging an administrative action is simpler than challenging a law enacted by the legislature, and such actions can also be reversed by future administrations.

Further bills that made headlines which died include:

...This is the first time in three years where the bills targeting LGBTQ+ people, and trans people in particular, seem to be losing steam, according to local organizers.

“The momentum is undeniably shifting against extremism,” Nadine Smith of Equality Florida said in a press release, “Extremist groups are collapsing amidst multiple scandals. Parents are mobilizing on behalf of their kids and to stop the dismantling of public education. We will build on this momentum and redouble our commitment to the fight. Together, we can put power back in the hands of the people.”"

-via Erin in the Morning, March 8, 2024

Comics have always been political

"The Biden Administration last week [early December, 2023] announced it would be seizing patents for drugs and drug manufacturing procedures developed using government money.

A draft of the new law, seen by Reuters, said that the government will consider various factors including whether a medical situation is leading to increased prices of the drug at any given time, or whether only a small section of Americans can afford it.

The new executive order is the first exercise in what is called “march-in-rights” which allows relevant government agencies to redistribute patents if they were generated under government funding. The NIH has long maintained march-in-rights, but previous directors have been unwilling to use them, fearing consequences.

“We’ll make it clear that when drug companies won’t sell taxpayer funded drugs at reasonable prices, we will be prepared to allow other companies to provide those drugs for less,” White House adviser Lael Brainard said on a press call.

But just how much taxpayer money is going toward funding drugs? A research paper from the Insitute for New Economic Thought showed that “NIH funding contributed to research associated with every new drug approved from 2010-2019, totaling $230 billion.”

The authors of the paper continue, writing “NIH funding also produced 22 thousand patents, which provided marketing exclusivity for 27 (8.6%) of the drugs approved [between] 2010-2019.”

How we do drug discovery and production in America has a number of fundamental flaws that have created problems in the health service industry.

It costs billions of dollars and sometimes as many as 5 to 10 years to bring a drug to market in the US, which means that only companies with massive financial muscle can do so with any regularity, and that smaller, more innovative companies can’t compete with these pharma giants.

This also means that if a company can’t recoup that loss, a single failed drug can result in massive disruptions to business. To protect themselves, pharmaceutical companies establish piles of patents on drugs and drug manufacturing procedures. Especially if the drug in question treats a rare or obscure disease, these patents essentially ensure the company has monoselective pricing regimes.

However, if a company can convince the NIH that a particular drug should be considered a public health priority, they can be almost entirely funded by the government, as the research paper showed.

Some market participants, in this case the famous billionaire investor Mark Cuban, have attempted to remedy the issue of drug costs in America by manufacturing generic versions of patented drugs sold for common diseases."

-via Good News Network, December 11, 2023

This is some cold-ass shit. As President, Biden has to say something. But he can say it in a way that says nothing and everything.

I want to shake the hand of the staffer that wrote this because this is absolutely fucking superb.

I know we (in general but especially neuroatypicals) prefer things to be clear and straightforward. But occasionally, you can do things in full view of the world like this. And that's kind of incredible.

If you're not clear why this message is so cold -

Biden (and/or the staffer who composed this) is using a technique called "damning with faint praise," which is the rhetorical equivalent of "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." Nothing he says is untrue, he just ... doesn't say much.

"I'll never forget the first time I met Dr. Kissinger..." A statement like this would normally be followed by a personal anecdote of some kind. But here it just stands alone.

"Throughout our careers, we often disagreed....." One would expect a but to follow this part, some way of softening such a statement by complimenting Kissinger. There isn't one.

"...his fierce intellect and profound strategic focus..." These are the nicest things the statement says about Kissinger, and the second one is a bit backhanded - "strategic focus" could be restated as "ruthlessness" or "knack for scheming" if they were willing to be rude.

"...he continued to offer his views..." This could be restated more positively if Biden meant it to be positive - "contribute his insights" or "share his wisdom." By using the very neutral "offer his views," the statement implies that's neutral is the best they could do.

"...and all those who loved him." This final sentence is brief and direct, and again, the absolute minimum Biden could say to be polite. It also delicately implies that the Bidens are not among those who loved him.

The whole thing avoids mentioning Kissinger's legacy, or even his actual government role. It's barely more than a form letter, and for someone so historically consequential as Kissinger, that implies Biden couldn't say more without being openly rude.

And for fun context to the "I'll never forget the first time I met Dr. Kissinger" part?

The first time Biden and Kissinger met, Biden was a freshman Senator and Kissinger was Secretary of State. Kissinger thought Biden was a senator's aide, so when Biden asked a question at a briefing, Kissinger told him staffers weren't allowed to speak, and tried to order him out of the room.

Once corrected that Biden was a Senator, Kissinger mispronounced Biden's name, and Biden responded calling him "Secretary Dulles". [link]

Additionally, Biden was the first US President since Nixon to never invite Kissinger to the White House. [link]

Leverage had a lot of well-researched things to say about the real world, but the one I always come back to, from The Double Blind Job:

Sophie: These are not small fines. Last year, my department handled a case where the company had to pay out $2.5 billion.

Hoffman: Oh, yeah. Everybody heard about that. But what the news didn’t tell you is that that company made $16 billion on the same drug. That fine was 14% of the profit. 14%. That’s like tipping your waiter.

For sources, David Graeber's getting an economist to admit that came from his book "The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy"

The exchange recorded in the book is:

For those of you saying “it just ends greyhound racing for profit” look at that wording. Do you know what can be considered a thing of value? Ribbons. Titles. Any sort of prize, trophy, or achievement award. This is vaguely worded for a reason, and that reason sure as hell isn’t to leave all other dog sports but greyhound racing for profit alone.

Even if you don’t care that hundreds or possibly thousands of dogs will die because of this bill (fuck you very much if you think they won’t), you should be worried about the effect it could have on all timed sports in Florida. This was something pushed by PETA, by HSUS. We know how they feel about animal sports, and about pet ownership in general. Do not be fooled by thinking there are any real positive motives behind this bullshit.

Fuck PETA, fuck HSUS, and FUCK Grey2k. They will literally not spend a PENNY to help the dogs being displaced. Grey2k flat out doesn’t even fucking believe in adoption. You thought what happened in AZ a few years ago was nuts? They pushed for that and didn’t lift a finger to help. Florida has thousands more dogs than AZ did.

Seeing some people on Tumblr still bitching about how it’s too late for voting and the only thing that will fix things is revolution.

How about you fucking vote anyway? It’s not going to seriously cut into your “sitting on the couch waiting for a revolution to start” time.

There’s no “none of the above” option here. You want a revolution, fine, but there’s still little shit to do in the meantime.

You can vote AND protest. They’re not exclusive. Hell, you can even protest the person you voted for when they fuck up. You’re not signing a blood oath with your ballot. But a desire for an ideologically pure candidate or nothing only serves the status quo right now.