December 8, 2024

I'm a fan of gallows humor myself.

I think it provides a valuable outlet for people's frustrations, and God knows a lot of Americans have a TON of frustrations regarding medical care costs and the roadblocks thrown up by the insurance industry between people and the medical care they need.

Even those of us who are lucky enough not to have had a really bad experience getting needed care covered (YET) have heard a million horror stories about people getting screwed over by insurance companies and dying unnecessarily, going bankrupt trying to pay for it themselves, etc., and we're sick of living with the constant fear of it happening to us.

That is why so many of us lack both the ability and the desire to shed a tear over this man's fate. Unfortunately for him, this obscenely rich CEO literally symbolizes everything about the American health care system that we're all fed up with, so of course a lot of us are going to react accordingly.

Furthermore, no one has the right to tell another person how to feel, period, full stop. We all have the right to feel however we feel about this, without being scolded or judged. That is all.

December 5, 2024

December photo contest

I am the host for this month's contest, and I've never done this before, so I apologize for the late start. This is your heads up that the contest will be starting soon. Exactly how soon is up for discussion, and I could use some input.

I am very flexible as to the starting date myself. Since I'm getting started late, I was thing of putting up the submission and comments threads a week from now, to give people a full week to chose their entries, take new photos, or whatever. However, Christmas is coming soon, and a lot of people get really busy this time of year, so if people would like the contest to start sooner, I would be happy to oblige.

Basically, I need to know how much lead time people need. I understand a week is customary, but it people don't really need that much lead time, I could make the start date much earlier.

Again, I apologize for my rookie mistake of not getting things started earlier in the month. Thank you for your patience!

December 1, 2024

Defending life, my ass. 🤬

They need to say what they mean, damn it. The only "life" they care about is that which is growing in a woman's uterus. They don't give 2 whoops in Hades about anything except making sure it stays in there until it's able to survive on the outside.

Once that life vacates the uterus, they don't give a single fuck what happens to it, to the uterus that housed and then expelled it, or (especially) the owner of that uterus. They have no intention of providing any resources to make sure its needs are met. As long as it gets born, that's a win, as far as they're concerned. What happens to it after that--whether it has enough to eat, a safe place to live, access to health care, or anything else--is not their concern. Their job was to make sure it got born; the rest is somebody else's problem.

That's because they don't actually care about life; what they care about is birth. And they don't care AT ALL about the life of the person who has to do the birthing. They care about making sure she stays pregnant long enough for birth to happen, but whether she stays healthy, or happy, or even sane, is irrelevant to them.

To these people, women are merely incubators, not actual people with wants, needs, hopes, and dreams of their own. Women don't matter to them, beyond their basic biological functions of becoming impregnated and staying that way until what's in their uterus is old enough to breath, eat, digest food, and basically stay alive without the help of an umbilical cord and a placenta.

The most infuriating part of the whole mess is their hypocrisy. It's not cool that they regard getting born as the only thing that matters, but lying about it makes the whole thing even worse. I've been saying for a long time that the term "pro life" was created to imply that those who think abortion should be legal are "pro-death." I still think so. It's time to start calling a spade a spade: the correct term is not pro life but pro birth.

November 24, 2024

Noviolence was a "white liberal doctrine"?

And all this time, I thought King got the idea from a brown Indian man named Mohandas K. Gandhi!

Oh wait, King did get his ideas from Gandhi (and Jesus Christ). Fancy that!

I remember reading a book about King's philosophy of noviolence in high school and being blown away by the idea of a Baptist preacher like him finding so much inspiration and instruction in the life and teachings of a "heathen" like Gandhi.

Being raised Baptist, I had been thoroughly indoctrinated in the idea that everything we could ever need is in the Bible and there is no reason to look elsewhere. I had already begun to (timidly) question that in my own mind, but learning how much of King's philosophy of nonviolence was drawn from Gandhi was a real epiphany for me, and reading this post brought it all back. I will always be grateful to both King and Gandhi for prying open the cramped little box I was raised in and letting in just enough light to start me on a path of thinking independently that has continued to this day.

Reading the rest of the post made me realize that J. Edgar Hoover was an even more "paranoid and diseased human being" than I had ever fully realized. I knew he had kept files on a large number of people he regarded as being highly dangerous, but seeing it all laid out like this made it really hit home fir ne. It especially made me realize how much he got terribly, profoundly wrong. The idea that King might ever embrace black nationalism is just one example.

I'm sure Trump and his henchmen have already started to assemble similar files (albeit probably in a computer database rather than index cards) and are adding to it as we speak. May God have mercy on us all.

November 23, 2024

Yes!

Remember this (in)famous quote?

"I think you all know that I've always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help." -- Ronald Reagan

That was the first time that I can personally recall hearing someone who was the actual head of the government saying, in effect, "Government BAD!" so loudly and clearly. At the time, I thought it was a nonsensical statement, but an awful lot of people obviously agreed with it and still do.

Reagan did not invent this anti-government mindset, but he did a lot, with his "gee golly gosh" phony folksiness, to popularize and set in cement the view that 1) all the government was good for was wasting money, and 2) anything the government did or wanted to do was, by definition, a waste of money.

During his 8 years in office, he also was big on cutting funding to social safety net programs of any kind. Among other things, the number of unhoused people in this country shot up during his administration and has continues to be a serious problem all themse years later.

I blame Reagan for a lot of things, many of them stemming from his eagerness to convince voters that the government should NOT be spending money on things that might actually help people improve their daily lives.

November 17, 2024

I don't know for sure how dangerous it is, but it's definitely wildly misleading,

I really question how many women will be taken in, because studies have shown that women who have abortions very rarely regret their decision. Getting to the point of acquiring abortion medication involves some effort, and I can't believe many would take the first dose and then suddenly change their minds. (Of course, even one person being harmed by this is one too many, but I just wanted to point out how rare changing one's mind about an abortion at the last minute actually is.)

I think efforts like this are based on the false beliefs held by many forced birthers that no woman really wants to have an abortion, that abortion is extremely harmful and dangerous, and that many women who have abortions suffer serious mental health issues due to feelings of guilt and regret. (Forced birthers call this last item "post-abortion syndrome" or "post-abortion stress syndrome," and insist that it is extremely common, despite the fact that it is not a recognized medical condition by any major mental health organization.)

Because of these beliefs, forced birthers think most women about to have an abortion are deeply conflicted and many would probably change their minds about getting an abortion with the "right" kind of persuasion. That's the main reason they demonstrate outside abortion clinics; they actually think yelling "please don't kill your baby" at people might change someone's mind.

This is also the reason for a lot of laws that have been passed, like requiring multiple clinic visits with a waiting period in between, or trying to force women to look at an ultrasound of their pregnancy. When Roe was in effect and states couldn't ban abortions outright, forced birthers focused on getting those kinds of laws passed, out of a hope that "surely these poor misguided women would not go through with this terrible thing if they only knew the 'truth,' were forced to take more time to think about it, etc." (Of course, they also wanted to make abortion as inconvenient as possible, but they also hoped to get a lot of women to change their minds about having an abortion.)

Most of the tactics used by so-called "crisis pregnancy centers" are based on the same kinds of beliefs. Forced birthers have no compunction about giving women erroneous information about the supposed "dangers" of abortion, creating unnecessary delays, or lying to them them that the ultrasound shows they're too far along, because they really believe they are doing women a big favor every time they keep one of them from getting an abortion.

Imo, the misinformation on this website has that same flavor of "either change the woman's mind or create enough delay that she won't be able to get an abortion until it's too late." I think the people behind something like this probably believe it for the most part, but they also believe if they can prevent a woman from getting an abortion by fair means or foul, she will thank them later.

Sorry to go on at such length. When I feel as strongly about something as I do about this, I can go on forever!

November 16, 2024

Yeah, I know he was a very successful environmental lawyer.

He had a great career doing that, accomplished some things that really helped people. A lawyer doesn't have to be a scientist to litigate science-based cases successfully. He just has to know how to pick the right expert witnesses and use them effectively. RFK Jr was obviously good at doing those things.

Imo, it's a shame he didn't stick with environmental law, because he could have continued to do good things with it. Unfortunately, he got off track somewhere along the line, started falling down conspiracy theory rabbit holes, and ended up deciding vaccines are all toxic and unsafe. He's already influenced a lot of people to stop vaccinating their kids, and in the position Trump wants to appoint him to, he'd be a major menace to public health.

I don't care how many major law cases he's won; when it comes to vaccines, I think he's a dangerous crackpot, and according to what I've read, so do most public health experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has written about some of the problems caused by RFK Jr and others in the antivaxx movement during the efforts to get people to be vaccinated for covid. I can't give you an internet link, but it's in the last chapter of Fauci's book, On Call, which I have on my Kindle App.

I'm not a health care professional or a public health expert myself, just a scientifically literate layperson who has read widely on vaccines, the antivaxx movement, and related topics. I believe strongly that vaccines havee a vitally important role to play in protecting public health, and I am strongly opposed to all efforts to convince people to be suspicious of vaccines and/or to encourage parents not to vaccinate their children according to the schedule recommended by the vast majority of pediatricians.

I don't think RFK Jr is evil. From what I've read, he evidently believes the junk science he's pushing and thinks he's trying to help people. However, any good intentions he may have don't make him any less wrong or any less dangerous, and they definitely don't make him qualified to head up the Dept. of Health and Human Services.

November 14, 2024

How do I deactivate my Xitter account?

I decided to join the masses who have been rushing over to join bluesky. If anyone wants to find me over there, my username is @bluestatebeliever.bsky.social.

Next step: Kick Xitter and its evil overlord to the curb. Only I can't figure out how to do it.

I could Google, but I thought I'd rather ask my DU friends first.

November 13, 2024

I saw a car with a Gadsen flag bumper sticker today.

You know, one of these things:

.

It caught my attention partly because it's very unusual to see any kind of bumper stickers on cars around here. I don't think I saw a single one during the entire 2024 election cycle, for any candidate. As a result, this one really jumped out at me.

I've been trying to figure out exactly what message this thing is intended to convey. I seem to recall seeing at least one of these flags on January 6.

Is this sticker a way of saying the car's owner is a Trumper without actually using the Orange One's name? If so, fuck that guy.

November 12, 2024

The freak out has begun!!!

MeidasTouch host Brett Meiselas reports on Trump supporters already suffering after voting for Donald Trump in the 2024 election. Please join me in wallowing in this Schadenfreude fest!

Visit https://meidastouch.com​ for more!