Every Traitor from or involved in Trump's administration who knew better and betrayed this country so they could later get a book deal, those are the books that should be banned, burned, banished from every bookshelf, library and bookstore and shame, absolute shame on the publisher's who bought into this betrayal of our country and provided any of these betrayers an advance and/or book deal! How dare they know what they knew and just takes notes in anticipation of a book deal while all that could have been different is left in the ashes. How dare they serve for one second after they knew better, let alone months or years, knowing better. All in anticipation of, "just wait till they hear this". We needed to hear that then! For so many to have done this speaks to the absolute moral absence in the upper reaches of our institutions. That these people. who rose through the ranks to have positions at those levels thought it more lucrative, than prudent? Just why are they given a voice now when they had the voice then and they chose to sacrifice a million lives and the integrity of our Country as they watched it burn? How dare they? How dare they?
I’m sorry but the exceptions for rape and incest have never made sense to me, even as emotionally difficult it would be for a woman to give birth to a child after things like that. If the principle is that a fetus is a human being from conception then any exception is allowance for murder. Sometimes compassion can lead someone astray because we don’t want people to suffer. Unfortunately, eradicating suffering is not only impossible but can easily lead to evil.
No offense but there is much more to pregnancy than conception and any pregnancy takes a toll on the body. There are actually life long implications that come with bringing any pregnancy to term. It can also come down to which life? Pregnancy more often than reported on can result in catastrophic consequences for the pregnant person. I would die if I become pregnant again by any means. Flat out. What's more in most instances of incest, the person who becomes impregnated is younger than 14. That person's body is in no way ready to undertake all the requirements of carrying a pregnancy to term. While some women sail through pregnancy with no complications, much more the norm are problems and complications in myriad forms from the benign to the profound. They just don't make the news. My first child was disabled for life because of birth complications, my second ended in miscarriage at three months, my third was emergency c-section, my fourth was miscarriage, my fifth was c-section to avoid complications and my sixth was definite c-section. Those are major surgeries. Now, if I were raped and became pregnant as a result, I would die if I attempted to carry that pregnancy to term, no medical question at all. My uterus would burst because of multiple surgeries. So, by making blanket decisions regarding highly individual circumstances, it rarely comes down to just emotions. Neither the Supreme Court nor any legislative body belongs in this realm at all. It should have never become a legal issue, it should have remained a medical issue. I speak from experience, both physical and emotional.
I think you’re right that my blanket statement didn’t do justice to the complexity of the issue. This issue wouldn’t be so contentious if it were easy to judge. Thank you for teaching me something. Yet, I’m uncomfortable with the idea of no protections for the unborn. If this is truly a human being, and I do believe the burden of proof for a fetus not being a human person is on those who are pro-choice, should we not make laws to defend them? If you notice I didn’t say that the life of the mother should be an exception. Anyways, I don’t mean for this to turn into some social media fight. At the very least, I do want to thank you for teaching me that pregnancy is more complex than I had originally thought.
RE: all the abortion programming this week. I wish you guys would bring up two things when you talk about the opinion polling: 1) every one of us knows and loves someone who had an abortion. The conversations I'm hearing on the Bulwark are still relfectove of those "other people" whi are making these choices. That's not true. Conservative, Christian, rural women and girls seek abortions as well. For some of these women and girls, the choice they made was because of an unexpected event - possibly coercion from a partner who wouldn't use a condom (I've seen A LOT of these instances), possibly a failure in birth control, possibly from an assault - we don't know. But many of these women are able to live out their lives because they didn't have to carry a pregnancy to term. Low income women often cannot just remain pregnant because they don't get paid time off for appointments, labor and delivery, and recovery. So, these women will not only be asked to continue an unwanted pregnancy, but also to risk their already precarious livelihood.
2) Why do women and girls seek abortions into the 2nd and 3rd trimesters? Some women may not know they're pregnant until the 3rd month or possibly later. Or, more tragically, she has a very planned, anticipated pregnancy that goes wrong. Many women - especially younger women - don't get diagnostic ultrasounds until 16 or 20 weeks. That's past everyone's red line. How is it kind or prolife ro require a woman to carry an non-viable pregnancy until she delivers?
Can we at least he honest about the whos and whys when we talk about taking away a 49 year old precedent?
The Tracinski carton is cute, albeit simplistic. Perhaps it should be drawn as a scale depicting the fact nearly the entire GOP base has run to the right, while only a handful of loony Democrats have run to the left.
One reason for cancelling student loans would be to give 21st century students the same benefits that previous generations got. In 1970 I left the Navy to go to UC Berkeley to study Chemistry. Between the GI bill and the pay for being Teaching Asst / Research Asst, graduate school was essentially free. Today college tuitions are affordable only to the rich. Others have to take on these huge loans. Our generation took advantage of all this but passed nothing on to today's students. We should be ashamed.
Perhaps instead we could explore why projects that cost a million a few decades ago now cost a trillion. Same with necessities. Why is all the wealth of nations concentrated in such few hands? That isn't natural. Why can't kids afford college? Who is it that is sapping the life blood of the People? And why do we let them do it?
Because they've bought most of the Rep Party, and some Dems as well, and they've bought what used to be reasonably fair news outlets and let swill/lies be broadcast on outlets that reach millions of people who have no access to other outlets, because "Saint Ronnie" convinced millions that trickle-down economics (the one that the first Bush called voodoo) would benefit them and that those poor, poor millionaires needed all those tax breaks, income 300 times their employees, and deductions that the middle class couldn't take, that Bush 2 could fight 2 wars (one of them totally unwarranted) without paying for them, and then little old Gingrich convinced a good number of Reps that compromise was a dirty word and no true Rep would ever do that. Oh, and F* the future - the only thing that matters is getting the Tea Party, Trump, and everyone who panders to him in power forever.
Ok, Charlie. Would you please interview an obstetrician so that you stop this simplistic rhetoric about third trimester abortions? Yes, they are rare. By the time that happens there are very good medical reasons for the procedure. Including the fetus dying a slow painful death within hours of being born. I am sure that most Americans would agree that these decisions should be made by a woman and her doctor. They are not done on demand because someone suddenly decides “Oh. Hey, I really don’t want to have a baby after all.”
Charlie should comment on Ross Douthat's latest grossness where he's very, very upset that women are in the workplace and really don't like it when the hubby has a mistress on the side, and is otherwise saying that the plight of men is the real issue. What kind of hollow, self-centered twit whines like this at a time like this.. RD: "Worth noting that in the 50 yrs since Roe, men have become less likely to find a spouse, less likely father kids or live with the kids they father, and less likely to participate in the workforce." How much of a tool do you have to be to post this?
Re abortions - I saw a good comment on Facebook. If banning abortions is really about the children, then why isn't childbirth free? and prenatal care? and any medical expenses for complications of pregnancy? And why don't we have 12 months of maternity/paternity leave if it's about the children?
Because that's what the SOCIALISTS/COMMUNISTS DEMOCRATS WANT!!!!!! And it will cost us the billions upon billions upon billions that the poor oil companies, the poor military contractors, the poor small billionaires like Trump need to survive. Oh, and of course, we also need to jail all those mothers who are so irresponsible that they have children they can't feed without US paying for them.
Re college loans - no, the people who took out loans weren't suckers. What forgiving the loans will tell them is they were playing a rigged game, and it sucked, but we shouldn't keep the game rigged because people got stuck with large loans in the past. And we need to get the game to be more fair moving forward.
"President Ronald Reagan detested abortion but..."
OMG, might we please, please dispense with Raegan. It was all 32 and more years ago. He's dead. He's gone. He's not coming back. And his beloved party is now a reeking despotic cesspool. And it's not going to be anything else. Ever.
My FIL, an army veteran and POW in WWII and a professor at a conservative college in Indiana - he got his degree after the war off a rec from his general who was in the same POW camp - once told me that the two Presidents he hated the most were Truman and Reagan. He regarded both as the anti-intellectual and stupid. He was a conservative and loved Ike. It took Reagan to not vote GOP. He'd be appalled by today's "democracy".
Here's the thing: if only the Left has moved, then the American Right has *always* been a hotbed of anti-democraric, dictator-embracing, pro-Russian fascist, pro white supremacist, pro conspiracy Jewish-Space-Laser JFK-Junior-reincarnation nutbars, yeah? I mean... is that really the argument?
I dunno, man. It's probably comforting to think that the Left are the only ones who are crazy, but if that's the argument, it seems to contain an enormous and damning admission.
I seem to recall a recent Morning Shots where Charlie had a lot to say about the Left crying wolf, doing things like calling anyone who disagrees with them a racist. Lots of people said he was being ridiculous. And today, lots of those same people are proving his point.
Regarding the exceptions to abortion bans: no one who truly believes that a zygote or fetus is a baby--a small human person-- could propose such an exception. After all, we don't eliminate toddlers due to their parentage or their level of inconvenience. Zygotes and fetuses are human, but they are not human persons shy of viability, which is well beyond the Roe standard.
I feel like pro-lifers who are for exceptions for rape and incest are telling on themselves. If the fetus has a right to life, why should it matter how it was conceived? The least charitable interpretation is that it's really about making sure a woman faces the consequences of her action. For the rape victim it's "oh you poor thing, you didn't want that sex of course you may have an abortion" but for everyone else, "you opened your legs willingly, so you're gonna carry that baby to term goddammit!". The extremists are at least being consistent.
A more charitable reading (and the one that is most likely) is that pro-lifers know it's unspeakably cruel to make a woman give birth to a child that was forcibly conceived. But how do you implement these exceptions? Do you need a conviction before you can get an abortion? It takes forever to get a trial. Does a woman just need to point the finger at someone? Talk about incentivising false rape accusations. If she just needs to say she's been raped than you've created an easily exploitable loophole. What is the point of the restriction then? If it's cruel to make a rape victim carry a baby to term then it's cruel to make anyone carry a baby to term.
If I remember correctly, Donald Trump got in trouble during the 2016 election for saying that women who have abortions should be prosecuted. A lot of conservatives flipped out, but it is the logical conclusion of the idea that abortion is murder. A woman is not a victim of an abortion, she is a willingly participant. If it's murder then everyone involved should be prosecuted. If it's not murder, if it's just morally icky, then why shouldn't the woman have the right to decide. It is her body after all.
The problem is, the criminal justice system moves like a snail. To claim rape, there has to be a criminal case. That takes time, and innocent until proven guilty is a thing. Those mitigations are nothing more than window dressing that aims to make extremists look less extreme. That rape loophole is not easily exploitable, but possibly the opposite. Damn ironic that with improved methods of contraception since Rowe was passed, the number of abortions has dropped. We are also forgetting that many women who seek abortions already have a child, and many are married. Young women ages 15 to 19 not using reliable birth control are the prevailing group. I see too many brains on this thread defaulting to the old trope that only single women get abortions.
Every Traitor from or involved in Trump's administration who knew better and betrayed this country so they could later get a book deal, those are the books that should be banned, burned, banished from every bookshelf, library and bookstore and shame, absolute shame on the publisher's who bought into this betrayal of our country and provided any of these betrayers an advance and/or book deal! How dare they know what they knew and just takes notes in anticipation of a book deal while all that could have been different is left in the ashes. How dare they serve for one second after they knew better, let alone months or years, knowing better. All in anticipation of, "just wait till they hear this". We needed to hear that then! For so many to have done this speaks to the absolute moral absence in the upper reaches of our institutions. That these people. who rose through the ranks to have positions at those levels thought it more lucrative, than prudent? Just why are they given a voice now when they had the voice then and they chose to sacrifice a million lives and the integrity of our Country as they watched it burn? How dare they? How dare they?
I’m sorry but the exceptions for rape and incest have never made sense to me, even as emotionally difficult it would be for a woman to give birth to a child after things like that. If the principle is that a fetus is a human being from conception then any exception is allowance for murder. Sometimes compassion can lead someone astray because we don’t want people to suffer. Unfortunately, eradicating suffering is not only impossible but can easily lead to evil.
No offense but there is much more to pregnancy than conception and any pregnancy takes a toll on the body. There are actually life long implications that come with bringing any pregnancy to term. It can also come down to which life? Pregnancy more often than reported on can result in catastrophic consequences for the pregnant person. I would die if I become pregnant again by any means. Flat out. What's more in most instances of incest, the person who becomes impregnated is younger than 14. That person's body is in no way ready to undertake all the requirements of carrying a pregnancy to term. While some women sail through pregnancy with no complications, much more the norm are problems and complications in myriad forms from the benign to the profound. They just don't make the news. My first child was disabled for life because of birth complications, my second ended in miscarriage at three months, my third was emergency c-section, my fourth was miscarriage, my fifth was c-section to avoid complications and my sixth was definite c-section. Those are major surgeries. Now, if I were raped and became pregnant as a result, I would die if I attempted to carry that pregnancy to term, no medical question at all. My uterus would burst because of multiple surgeries. So, by making blanket decisions regarding highly individual circumstances, it rarely comes down to just emotions. Neither the Supreme Court nor any legislative body belongs in this realm at all. It should have never become a legal issue, it should have remained a medical issue. I speak from experience, both physical and emotional.
I think you’re right that my blanket statement didn’t do justice to the complexity of the issue. This issue wouldn’t be so contentious if it were easy to judge. Thank you for teaching me something. Yet, I’m uncomfortable with the idea of no protections for the unborn. If this is truly a human being, and I do believe the burden of proof for a fetus not being a human person is on those who are pro-choice, should we not make laws to defend them? If you notice I didn’t say that the life of the mother should be an exception. Anyways, I don’t mean for this to turn into some social media fight. At the very least, I do want to thank you for teaching me that pregnancy is more complex than I had originally thought.
RE: all the abortion programming this week. I wish you guys would bring up two things when you talk about the opinion polling: 1) every one of us knows and loves someone who had an abortion. The conversations I'm hearing on the Bulwark are still relfectove of those "other people" whi are making these choices. That's not true. Conservative, Christian, rural women and girls seek abortions as well. For some of these women and girls, the choice they made was because of an unexpected event - possibly coercion from a partner who wouldn't use a condom (I've seen A LOT of these instances), possibly a failure in birth control, possibly from an assault - we don't know. But many of these women are able to live out their lives because they didn't have to carry a pregnancy to term. Low income women often cannot just remain pregnant because they don't get paid time off for appointments, labor and delivery, and recovery. So, these women will not only be asked to continue an unwanted pregnancy, but also to risk their already precarious livelihood.
2) Why do women and girls seek abortions into the 2nd and 3rd trimesters? Some women may not know they're pregnant until the 3rd month or possibly later. Or, more tragically, she has a very planned, anticipated pregnancy that goes wrong. Many women - especially younger women - don't get diagnostic ultrasounds until 16 or 20 weeks. That's past everyone's red line. How is it kind or prolife ro require a woman to carry an non-viable pregnancy until she delivers?
Can we at least he honest about the whos and whys when we talk about taking away a 49 year old precedent?
The Tracinski carton is cute, albeit simplistic. Perhaps it should be drawn as a scale depicting the fact nearly the entire GOP base has run to the right, while only a handful of loony Democrats have run to the left.
Thoroughly enjoyed and should be required reading. Now beginning my weekend feeling very well informed and somewhat entertained thanks to you and Tim!
One reason for cancelling student loans would be to give 21st century students the same benefits that previous generations got. In 1970 I left the Navy to go to UC Berkeley to study Chemistry. Between the GI bill and the pay for being Teaching Asst / Research Asst, graduate school was essentially free. Today college tuitions are affordable only to the rich. Others have to take on these huge loans. Our generation took advantage of all this but passed nothing on to today's students. We should be ashamed.
Perhaps instead we could explore why projects that cost a million a few decades ago now cost a trillion. Same with necessities. Why is all the wealth of nations concentrated in such few hands? That isn't natural. Why can't kids afford college? Who is it that is sapping the life blood of the People? And why do we let them do it?
Because they've bought most of the Rep Party, and some Dems as well, and they've bought what used to be reasonably fair news outlets and let swill/lies be broadcast on outlets that reach millions of people who have no access to other outlets, because "Saint Ronnie" convinced millions that trickle-down economics (the one that the first Bush called voodoo) would benefit them and that those poor, poor millionaires needed all those tax breaks, income 300 times their employees, and deductions that the middle class couldn't take, that Bush 2 could fight 2 wars (one of them totally unwarranted) without paying for them, and then little old Gingrich convinced a good number of Reps that compromise was a dirty word and no true Rep would ever do that. Oh, and F* the future - the only thing that matters is getting the Tea Party, Trump, and everyone who panders to him in power forever.
Ok, Charlie. Would you please interview an obstetrician so that you stop this simplistic rhetoric about third trimester abortions? Yes, they are rare. By the time that happens there are very good medical reasons for the procedure. Including the fetus dying a slow painful death within hours of being born. I am sure that most Americans would agree that these decisions should be made by a woman and her doctor. They are not done on demand because someone suddenly decides “Oh. Hey, I really don’t want to have a baby after all.”
Charlie should comment on Ross Douthat's latest grossness where he's very, very upset that women are in the workplace and really don't like it when the hubby has a mistress on the side, and is otherwise saying that the plight of men is the real issue. What kind of hollow, self-centered twit whines like this at a time like this.. RD: "Worth noting that in the 50 yrs since Roe, men have become less likely to find a spouse, less likely father kids or live with the kids they father, and less likely to participate in the workforce." How much of a tool do you have to be to post this?
Re abortions - I saw a good comment on Facebook. If banning abortions is really about the children, then why isn't childbirth free? and prenatal care? and any medical expenses for complications of pregnancy? And why don't we have 12 months of maternity/paternity leave if it's about the children?
Because that's what the SOCIALISTS/COMMUNISTS DEMOCRATS WANT!!!!!! And it will cost us the billions upon billions upon billions that the poor oil companies, the poor military contractors, the poor small billionaires like Trump need to survive. Oh, and of course, we also need to jail all those mothers who are so irresponsible that they have children they can't feed without US paying for them.
Re college loans - no, the people who took out loans weren't suckers. What forgiving the loans will tell them is they were playing a rigged game, and it sucked, but we shouldn't keep the game rigged because people got stuck with large loans in the past. And we need to get the game to be more fair moving forward.
"President Ronald Reagan detested abortion but..."
OMG, might we please, please dispense with Raegan. It was all 32 and more years ago. He's dead. He's gone. He's not coming back. And his beloved party is now a reeking despotic cesspool. And it's not going to be anything else. Ever.
JHC, desist!
My FIL, an army veteran and POW in WWII and a professor at a conservative college in Indiana - he got his degree after the war off a rec from his general who was in the same POW camp - once told me that the two Presidents he hated the most were Truman and Reagan. He regarded both as the anti-intellectual and stupid. He was a conservative and loved Ike. It took Reagan to not vote GOP. He'd be appalled by today's "democracy".
Reagan would never get elected today.
Here's the thing: if only the Left has moved, then the American Right has *always* been a hotbed of anti-democraric, dictator-embracing, pro-Russian fascist, pro white supremacist, pro conspiracy Jewish-Space-Laser JFK-Junior-reincarnation nutbars, yeah? I mean... is that really the argument?
I dunno, man. It's probably comforting to think that the Left are the only ones who are crazy, but if that's the argument, it seems to contain an enormous and damning admission.
They only are openly supporting insurrection, but sure, it's wokeness that's the issue.
I think it's just a weak excuse for cowards to keep voting Republican.
But then again, I'm a dirty foreigner. What do I know?
Well, it looks like another commenting forum gone to hell, Something about size, it was fun while it lasted. Ya know an ignore button would help,
I seem to recall a recent Morning Shots where Charlie had a lot to say about the Left crying wolf, doing things like calling anyone who disagrees with them a racist. Lots of people said he was being ridiculous. And today, lots of those same people are proving his point.
Regarding the exceptions to abortion bans: no one who truly believes that a zygote or fetus is a baby--a small human person-- could propose such an exception. After all, we don't eliminate toddlers due to their parentage or their level of inconvenience. Zygotes and fetuses are human, but they are not human persons shy of viability, which is well beyond the Roe standard.
I feel like pro-lifers who are for exceptions for rape and incest are telling on themselves. If the fetus has a right to life, why should it matter how it was conceived? The least charitable interpretation is that it's really about making sure a woman faces the consequences of her action. For the rape victim it's "oh you poor thing, you didn't want that sex of course you may have an abortion" but for everyone else, "you opened your legs willingly, so you're gonna carry that baby to term goddammit!". The extremists are at least being consistent.
A more charitable reading (and the one that is most likely) is that pro-lifers know it's unspeakably cruel to make a woman give birth to a child that was forcibly conceived. But how do you implement these exceptions? Do you need a conviction before you can get an abortion? It takes forever to get a trial. Does a woman just need to point the finger at someone? Talk about incentivising false rape accusations. If she just needs to say she's been raped than you've created an easily exploitable loophole. What is the point of the restriction then? If it's cruel to make a rape victim carry a baby to term then it's cruel to make anyone carry a baby to term.
If I remember correctly, Donald Trump got in trouble during the 2016 election for saying that women who have abortions should be prosecuted. A lot of conservatives flipped out, but it is the logical conclusion of the idea that abortion is murder. A woman is not a victim of an abortion, she is a willingly participant. If it's murder then everyone involved should be prosecuted. If it's not murder, if it's just morally icky, then why shouldn't the woman have the right to decide. It is her body after all.
The problem is, the criminal justice system moves like a snail. To claim rape, there has to be a criminal case. That takes time, and innocent until proven guilty is a thing. Those mitigations are nothing more than window dressing that aims to make extremists look less extreme. That rape loophole is not easily exploitable, but possibly the opposite. Damn ironic that with improved methods of contraception since Rowe was passed, the number of abortions has dropped. We are also forgetting that many women who seek abortions already have a child, and many are married. Young women ages 15 to 19 not using reliable birth control are the prevailing group. I see too many brains on this thread defaulting to the old trope that only single women get abortions.