26 thoughts on “Miffed”

  1. from above NPR link:

    The name-brand drug Mifeprex was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration more than 20 years ago. Since then, it has been used millions of times, and major medical groups say it has a strong safety record. A generic version was approved in 2019.
    Now, the drug’s future is in jeopardy. A federal judge in Texas issued a preliminary injunction that undoes the FDA’s approval of mifepristone nationwide beginning this Friday. Meanwhile, a competing ruling out of Washington state could limit the Texas injunction’s reach.
    The Biden administration has appealed the Texas decision and requested an emergency stay of the injunction. A federal appeals court is likely to weigh in this week.
    Ultimately, it may be up to the Supreme Court to resolve the conflicts.
    […]
    As of Monday, there is no change yet to Americans’ ability to access mifepristone.
    But that could change as soon as this Friday, when the preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk is set to take effect.
    […]
    Meanwhile, there’s a competing ruling out of Washington state, where the attorneys general of 17 states and the District of Columbia had sought to force the FDA to expand access to the drug.
    The judge in that case, U.S. District Judge Thomas Rice, an Obama appointee, didn’t go that far. But he did rule Friday that the agency cannot alter access to the drug while the lawsuit proceeds. That decision could offer relief if the Texas injunction goes into effect — though it would be limited to those 17 states and the District of Columbia.
    (Those states are Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.)
    For residents of those states, Rice’s decision “preserves the status quo on ensuring that access to mifepristone remains available,” said Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson to NPR on Friday.
    For the rest, Ferguson said, the Texas ruling “seriously has the potential to eliminate that access for mifepristone here in the coming days.”
    On Monday, the U.S. Department of Justice asked Judge Rice to clarify how the two rulings might interact.
    [continues]

  2. in other news

    Leaks of government intelligence reports have created a full-blown international crisis, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas appears compromised by decades of undisclosed luxury gifts from a Hitler-loving GOP donor, and the Republican-led legislature in Tennessee claims race played no factor in the expulsion of two Black lawmakers.

  3. on those leaks

    Leak of secret US defense papers could be ‘tip of the iceberg’, report says | US national security | The Guardian

    […]
    The investigative journalism group Bellingcat traced the leak back through a series of channels used by different internet communities, mostly involving teenagers with interests ranging from military gear, Orthodox Christianity, music and video games, all using Discord, a messaging platform popular with gamers. Racist language was common on the internet forums involved.
    Several Discord users told Bellingcat that the original source of the leak was a server used only by 20 people, which went by a variety of different names, most frequently Thug Shaker Central. It was set up by followers of a popular YouTuber called Oxide, who posts videos about weapons and other military paraphernalia.
    The sources said that the first leaks on Thug Shaker Central dated back to last October, and involved far more documents than have so far come to light. The most recent leaked documents are dated as recently as early March. The leaker allegedly was acting as the server’s administrator and set up a channel within Thug Shaker Central called “Bear vs Pig”, about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
    The documents did not spread beyond Thug Shaker Central until late February, when one of the users of the “Bear vs Pig” channel, a teenager who went by the name Lucca, started posting 107 of the photographed documents on a more widely used server, WowMao, for fans of a UK-based Filipino YouTuber known for his video memes, often about European and Asian history.

  4. Come senators, congressmen Please heed the call
    Don’t stand in the doorway Don’t block up the hall
    For he that gets hurt Will be he who has stalled.
    The battle outside ragin’
    Will soon shake your windows And rattle your walls
    For the times they are a-changin’

  5. for sure “times they are a-changing” for GOPers poll-wise

    wapo:

    Support for abortion rights in general has trended upward since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, with Republicans seeming to pay a price at the ballot box in the 2022 midterms. Positions favoring abortion rights won when the issues were put directly to voters, including in red states.
    But even in that context, the abortion pill would seem to be an unusually dicey issue for the Republican Party:
    A Reuters poll last month tested precisely this issue, asking whether people would support federal courts overturning access to mifepristone. Just 27 percent expressed support, while 7 in 10 Americans opposed such a ruling.
    A month earlier, the same poll asked whether medication abortion should remain legal in the United States. Americans agreed it should, 65 percent to 21 percent, with even 49 percent of Republicans agreeing.
    The numbers echo other polling on whether people should be allowed to receive the pill via the mail. A Public Religion Research Institute poll in February showed people opposed banning that by 72 percent to 26 percent. The same poll last year found that 56 percent of Republicans also opposed such a ban.
    A Marquette University Law School poll last year found Americans opposed a ban on women getting prescriptions for the pill from out-of-state providers by 76 percent to 23 percent.
    These last two questions, it bears emphasizing, weren’t even about whether the pill should simply be available — just whether people should be able to get it via the mail and from out-of-state providers (i.e. potentially if abortion is banned in their state). But the totality of the data indicates that this is a more lopsided issue than abortion rights generally. Around 7 in 10 Americans support access, and even relatively easy access, to the abortion pill, and that includes as many as half of Republicans.
    There are some caveats here.
    The biggest one is that people don’t seem to know much about medication abortion. One recent poll showed that only 31 percent said they had heard of mifepristone, despite estimates finding it accounts for more than half of abortions. Another suggests many people wrongly equate it with Plan B, or emergency contraception that can be taken within 72 hours of intercourse to prevent pregnancy. That poll showed 36 percent of people wrongly believed they were the same thing, which could inflate support.

  6. editorial board’s Opinion | Judge Kacsmaryk relied on ideology, not law, to block abortion drug – The Washington Post

    Two opposing rulings by federal judges late last week have set the country up for a possible Supreme Court showdown over the abortion pill mifepristone. But first things first: Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk’s effective injunction invalidating the medication’s approval nationwide needs to be put on pause.
    This decision, from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, overturns the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone while relying on an 1873 anti-vice law to find that abortion drugs can’t be sent by mail or other delivery service. All of this applies even in states where it remains legal for a woman to terminate her pregnancy.
    […]
    The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, to which the Justice Department has already filed notice of its appeal, might end up sorting through these arguments itself. So might the Supreme Court, now that Judge Thomas O. Rice of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington has ordered the FDA, contrary to the Texas ruling, to maintain the status quo. But regardless of whether that status quo ends up surviving the appeals process — as it ought to — it should remain in place at least until that process is over. The 5th Circuit or, if necessary, the Supreme Court should stay the Kacsmaryk injunction while litigation plays out.
    There is no reason to disrupt the state of affairs that has developed in the 23 years since the FDA first made its determination on mifepristone, and there’s plenty of reason not to. More than half of legal abortions in the United States are conducted via a two-drug regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol. Take mifepristone away, and women will turn to misoprostol alone — safe, too, but less effective and more likely to cause side effects like nausea. Also worrisome is that miscarriage patients will lose access to a go-to treatment, which could force them to choose a riskier option such as undergoing surgery to have tissue removed or waiting weeks until it passes.
    Supporters of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to overturn Roe v. Wade claimed the ruling merely put the abortion question in the hands of individual states. So much for that. Judge Kacsmaryk’s decision marks the first time a court has dictated a drug be removed from the market over the FDA’s objection. If it stands, women won’t be able to choose to have medication abortions, and states won’t have the right to let them.

  7. other songs (other than dylan’s) come to mind such as

    Lukas Nelson Shares Harrowing New Song After Overturn of Roe v. Wade – Rolling Stone

    PROMISE OF THE Wheel’s Lukas Nelson — son of Willie Nelson — shared a harrowing new song written in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
    Nelson posted a video of himself performing the song, along with its lyrics, on Instagram Sunday, saying he’d written the song the night before. Accompanied by some simple acoustic finger-picking, Nelson sings about three women forced to bring their pregnancies to term despite the extreme circumstances surrounding them, such as date rape, incest, and a miscarriage.
    “Now the stars don’t shine for her at night,” Nelson sings on the chorus, “They’re just holes in the sky/They don’t give no light/And the darkness lingers/Endlessly/For she must carry the seed.”

    Lukas Nelson + POTR on Instagram: “I wrote this song last night. Here are the lyrics… “Somewhere in our great country  She met an alright guy  He showed her his…”

     

  8. If this goes through, they are going after birth control pills.

    Viagra, you are safe as kittens. 

    Who will get to write the history books of this era? Who will be allowed to read them in the future?

  9. https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/11/asia/taiwan-air-force-pooh-patch-intl-hnk-ml/index.html

    “The patch shows an angry Formosan black bear holding Taiwan’s flag and punching Winnie the Pooh, with the slogan “Scramble!” – referring to what the island’s pilots have had to do with increased frequency over the past three years as China sends more aircraft into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone – a self-declared buffer that extends beyond the island’s airspace.”

    “China’s Communist Party claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory despite never having controlled it and has not ruled out taking the island by force. Tsai’s government rejects China’s sovereignty claims, saying only Taiwan’s people can decide their future.”

    Hmmm, if Taiwan exports most of its goods, including semiconductors, to China, I guess we are their new customers? And, I guess those patches weren’t made in China.

    ps – Remember the Philippines. A lot of this is about that.

  10. BiD, picking up on a comment of yours from yesterday, we went to NYC a couple of times last year in the March/April and June/July time frames.  We ate outside, stayed and hung out mostly in lower midtown – 40th Street – to the lower West Side down around 14th St.  Things seemed pretty normal there.  Even Times Square seemed about as it had pre pandemic.  I will say the subways seemed a little dirtier than normal and maybe it was my imagination, but there seemed to be more younger folks who didn’t seem to have a purpose for hanging in them.  I’ll say that was a bit uncomfortable, but that might just be a function of my age. 

  11. the hill:

    Tennessee state Rep. Justin Jones (D-Nashville) has retaken his oath of office and been reinstated to the state House days after being expelled for joining a state capitol protest against gun violence.

    On Monday afternoon, the Nashville Metropolitan Council voted to reinstate Jones, after the GOP-controlled House voted to expel him and his colleague Rep. Justin Pearson (D-Memphis). 

    […]

    Pearson’s seat, representing District 86, will be addressed at a special meeting of the Shelby County Board of Commissioners in Memphis on Wednesday, according to Commission Chairman Mickell Lowery.

    Both Jones and Pearson, if elected, will serve on an interim basis until a special election can be held in the coming months. Both have indicated they plan to run in the special election.

  12. Rep. Justin Jones retakes oath after Metro Council reappoints him to seat (tennessean.com)

    Rep. Justin Jones takes to the microphone for the first time upon returning to the House floor

    House Speaker Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville called on Jones to speak within minutes of his re-taking his seat.

    “I want to welcome the people back to the people’s house. I want to welcome democracy back to the people’s house,” Jones said in his first remarks back on the floor. “On last Thursday, members tried to crucify democracy, but today we have a resurrection.”

    “Today, 78,000 people have a voice in this chamber once again,” he added. “No expulsion, no attempt to silence us will stop us, but only galvanize and strengthen our movement. We continue to show up in the people’s house. Power to the people!”

    Sexton gaveled participants responding to Jones’ speech in the galleries into order twice before Jones finished.

    Jones will not be reappointed to legislative committees until after a special election is held. He will be allowed to file 15 new bills, as his original 15 bills were transferred to Leader Karen Camper when he was expelled. Jones said Monday that he plans to use all of those “to call for common sense gun reforms.”

  13. pogo – I was there in March & April.  We may have passed each other.   I had to laugh at the weed trade near T Sq.
    One guy said he was giving away free weed because he over-bought (high inventory – ha!) and I just needed to pay the “tax.”
    The next day a guy asked me for money to buy a “small bag” of weed.  Dude, your timing is terrible. There was a guy here yesterday giving it away.
    Another guy started to hit me up for money as I walked by, and made the mistake of putting his hand on my shoulder to stop me from walking away.  He felt me tense and let go. Could’ve lost a nut if he hadn’t. 

    I love NY. 

    I don’t do the subway. A friend who used to live in the city turned me into the bus. Ride up and down the streets and walk the avenues. It’s faster and cleaner and you’re out in the city instead of in a hole in the ground.

    The OMNY pass thing is great. No more Metro cards, just tap your phone or credit card.

  14. Generally our hops up and downtown in NYC are in excess of 20 blocks, and we always walk crosstown.

  15. Damn…..that’s Brutal.
    Just saw a sign on the internet which read, “Kid Rock announced earlier today that he has decided to move his entire music catalogue from the 8-track bin at Goodwill Thrift Stores.”
     

  16. plea from louisville doc today

    “i would simply ask you to do something because doing nothing which is what we’ve been doing is not working “

    and another one from new KY congressman who says “public safety isn’t political”

     

  18. pogo – Busses aren’t just for short hops.  If it’s that short, just walk.  I am talking 20 blocks. But, the fewer who use it makes it easier for those who do. 

  20. So, drugstore tabloid “the Globe”, owned by AMI, run by David Pecker, of trump indictment fame, is running front-page hit-pieces against DuhSantis, similar in type to those it used to run against HRC.  The headline i saw today accused the former Navy JAG officer and current portly dweeb of torture.  It gave me a chuckle, thought i’d share

  21. That is to say, if one of those people is to be a “star-witness”, it doesn’t seem such participation would be willing, considering he is still carrying dipshit’s water.  
     
    What could dipshit have done for said sensationalist to keep the latter so dutifully servile is my curiosity 

  22. https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/11/politics/kfile-michigan-gop-chair-kristina-karamo-comments/index.html

    So much coo-coo in one article. So much.

    “In a September 2020 podcast, she claimed Black Lives Matter’s leaders were “Marxist witches” and said,”it’s rooted in Pagan religion, and you’re channeling spirits and you’re performing satanic rituals to get your movement done.”

    “Karamo also believes that demonic possession is real…”

    “Karamo has baselessly accused music stars like Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Cardi B, Ariana Grande and Billie Eilish of being tools of Satan. She claimed Beyoncé used an album to convert Black Americans to paganism…”

    “After losing every statewide office and full control of the state government for the first time in nearly 40 years, Michigan Republicans elected Karamo – who made these comments and many others within the last few years – as their new state party chairwoman and the first Black person to lead the state party.”

  24. https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/11/business/leon-levine-family-dollar-founder-dies/index.html

    LLeon Levine, who built Family Dollar into a discount retail giant catering to America’s lower-income and middle-class shoppers, has died at 85.”

    “The Leon Levine Foundation, the philanthropic organization Levine later founded, confirmed in an online statement he died on April 5.”

    “Levine found a niche appealing to lower-income customers in mostly rural areas. He would look for new store locations by driving around and checking supermarket parking lots. Fresh oil spots on the pavement meant the locals drove older cars and didn’t have much money for repairs…”

    “We’re just the opposite of a Wal-Mart,” Family Dollar president George Mahoney told the Associated Press in 1993. “Our customers don’t want the hassle of shopping in a huge store, or they lack the funds to shop there.”

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