The December photo contest needs more entries!

We are now up to 13 entries, with the contest scheduled to close on Tuesday, 12/17. We usually shoot for 30 entries, but right now, we are less than halfway to that number. Even if we decide to run the contest with fewer entries than 30, as has been done at times, we still need more entries. If there's anyone out there who has considered submitting an entry but hasn't done so yet, I would like to warmly encourage you to join in by posting a photo in the submission thread, which is here: https://www.democraticunderground.com/1036139794

Depending in how many entries we get in the next couple of days, the contest nay be opened to allow people to submit an additional entry, but I'd like to give it a little more time before jumping to that.

Thank you all for your patience and your participation!

Doctor calls out claim denials amid UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting

***Submission Thread for the December Photo Contest***

The theme for the December contest is a seasonal one: Autumn.

PLEASE DO NOT PUT ANYTHING BUT ENTRIES IN THIS SUBMISSION THREAD

Submissions will remain open until December 17th, unless we reach our limit of 30 prior to that.

Rules
MONTHLY CONTEST:

Your photo must be your own original work. Please do not post a photo downloaded from the internet and presented as your own.

Only one entry of your own original work per person, unless/until the Volunteer Host opens Submissions for second entries. You need to post your entry in the submission thread started by the Host of a contest. Please be sure to include a "Title" for your photograph in the Subject line of your post. The submission thread is for photo entries only, no comments, no questions. The Host will start a separate thread just for comments and questions.

Here's the link for the Comments Thread:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1036139793

Once a photo is entered in a contest it is ineligible for any future contest unless the Host specifies otherwise.

The Winner of the contest is the one that comes up with the Theme of the next contest. They can just decide on a theme or may ask for suggestions and then run a poll to pick one of them. Either way the Theme will always be at the discretion of the person who won the contest.

The Volunteer Host has the option of adding other rules to the contest they are hosting. An example would be no Black & White or all Black & White entries.

The Volunteer Host has the option of declaring the submissions being blind (no one knows who entered which photo) or public. Should the Host op for blind submissions it is their responsibility to instruct entrants on how to get their entries to the host.

We no longer have rules about the photo size. But please be reasonable! Ask if you have questions. Keep in mind that photos which are too large can be a disadvantage. For instance, photos that are too tall may require scrolling to see the entire image on a computer screen. Photos that are too wide may not look great when viewed vertically on a phone.

The Volunteer Host is the final authority in their contests. The Volunteer Host may enter a contest as long as the Volunteer Host is not the previous winner and has not selected the theme for the contest which they are hosting.

Submissions will be limited to 30 entries maximum unless the Photography Group votes to change the limits.

The Winner of the contest agrees to pick the next month's theme. The Winner of the monthly contest may not enter the contest for which they selected a theme.

The Submission & Comment threads will be posted in the Photography Group. The Preliminary polls and Final Contest poll will be posted in GD per EarlG’s permission.

The Host of the Contest may copy and paste these rules into their submission thread or post a link to these rules into the submission thread. The Host WILL copy and paste the CONTEST LICENSE into the submission thread in its entirety. (At bottom of post)

CONTEST LICENSE:

An entrant to this contest, by submitting a photograph, is giving permission for that photograph to be copied to Demopedia or to a linked Gallery and included in a DU Calendar that will display the photographs entered for this contest for the purpose of publicizing future contests and/or commemorating current and past contests. The entrant retains all other rights to the photograph being submitted. Neither Demopedia and/or a linked Gallery may use any photograph submitted for any purpose other than to display the photograph being submitted by the entrant, and neither gains any real or implied ownership rights to the photograph.

***Comments Thread for the December Photo Contest***

This is the thread for you to use for any comments, questions or whatever you need to post about this month's contest!

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 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!

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.

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.

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

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!