Fascism

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Republicans block bill to protect women who travel to other states for abortions.

Webster: “Fascism is a regime that exalts nation above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.”

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21 thoughts on “Fascism”

  2. cagle cartoons headline for this was “Think Biden ‘s bad? Every other alternative is worse.”

     

  3. these wise words by Penn Live/Patriot News opinion editor and political columnist John Micek accompanied the above ‘toon at cagle:

    It’s been a long, hot summer for Democrats.
    A new New York Times/Siena College poll points the way to the party’s current malaise: Nearly two-thirds of Democratic voters – 64 percent – say they want someone other than President Joe Biden to be the party’s nominee in two years’ time, and barely a third say they approve of his job performance right now.
    Yet when they were asked whether they’d vote for Biden if forced to choose between him and the insurrectionist ex-president, 92 percent of Democrats said they’d stick with the Democratic incumbent. The poll also gave Biden a narrow edge over former President Donald Trump in a hypothetical head-to-head rematch.
    This divide should send shivers up the spine of party leaders and activists alike, who now seem poised to repeat the grievous miscalculation of 2016, when 12 percent of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ supporters voted for Trump, effectively helping to deny Hillary Clinton the White House.
    Except this time, any protest vote will have implications far beyond the intramural debates of which grassroots Democrats are so destructively enamored.
    As both the Jan. 6 insurrection and last month’s catastrophic U.S. Supreme Court decisions made abundantly clear, nothing less than the future of the Republic is on the line. A win by Republicans this fall will end any chance of codifying reproductive rights. A win in 2024 could well spell the end of American democracy.
    Yes, things aren’t going well for Biden at the moment: Gas prices (which he doesn’t control) are still high; despite healthy job growth, inflation continues to rage; the pandemic is still with us, and there’s ongoing global instability.
    Americans, frankly, are exhausted from the roller-coaster ride of the last three years. And Biden, who was elected, in large part, as an antidote to the chaos of the Trump era, has not been able to provide as much reassurance as the public would like.
    That’s not to set aside Biden’s significant wins in the form of both the American Rescue Plan and the bipartisan infrastructure law. Both were historic and transformative pieces of legislation — and Democrats have spent months traveling the country reminding voters of their respective benefits.
    Whatever his failings, Biden is still far preferable to Trump or any of his would-be successors, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose actual malevolence outstrips Trump’s buffoonish fascism.
    The poll lays bare the increasing generation gap between the Democratic establishment and younger activists who believe it’s time for older party leaders to step aside.
    Indeed, Biden would be 82 were he to run again in 2024.
    There also are concerns that party leaders aren’t being aggressive enough in the face of the GOP’s pugilistic tactics.
    Progressives have, for instance, justifiably complained that Biden did not move swiftly enough after the nation’s highest court toppled Roe v. Wade last month – a misstep which Biden since has attempted to correct.
    Still, the latter is a concern that I share. Republicans, who do not hold majorities in either house of Congress, effectively act as if they do – and Democrats too willingly acquiesce.
    It also doesn’t help that two Democratic members of the Senate, Joe Manchin, of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema, of Arizona, are de facto members of the GOP.
    But the question again becomes one of not only political survival, but of national survival. There is a deep and promising Democratic bench, but there is not a candidate who is immediately ready to step into Biden’s shoes.
    And some prominent congressional progressives also appear to realize that, as well.
    “I plan to support [Biden] because of the danger Donald Trump poses,” California Rep. Rho Khanna told CNN. “I would certainly not do anything to weaken him, and I hope no one else will do anything to weaken him.”
    Nor, does it seem, that neither California Gov. Gavin Newsom, nor Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, both of whom also have been mentioned as a possible candidates, harbor similar West Wing ambitions.
    “We need to unify the Democratic Party, not destroy ourselves from within,” Newsom said, according to CNN. “We need to have our president’s back. But we also have to get back on the field. He needs troops. He has to govern. Our job is to organize, and it’s to have his back.”
    As in 2016, Democrats are going to have to decide whether it’s more important to prove a point or to win. The difference this time is not merely academic – it’s existential.

  4. Biden pledges executive action after Joe Manchin scuppers climate agenda | Joe Manchin | The Guardian

    Joe Biden has promised executive action on climate change after Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator who has repeatedly thwarted his own party while making millions in the coal industry, refused to support more funding for climate action.
    In another blow to Democrats ahead of the midterm elections, the West Virginia senator also came out against tax raises for wealthy Americans.
    Manchin’s opposition became clear on Thursday night. On Friday, with Biden in Saudi Arabia, the White House issued a statement.
    Biden said: “Action on climate change and clean energy remains more urgent than ever.
    “So let me be clear: if the Senate will not move to tackle the climate crisis and strengthen our domestic clean energy industry, I will take strong executive action to meet this moment.
    “My actions will create jobs, improve our energy security, bolster domestic manufacturing and supply chains, protect us from oil and gas price hikes in the future, and address climate change. I will not back down: the opportunity to create jobs and build a clean energy future is too important to relent.”
    [continues]

  5. Which is why Sturg is correct; it’s time to rally around Biden.   The alternative is horrifying.   

  6. The poll , once again, was 879 people. It’s a worthless stupid poll except to give malcontents a foothold in Gripe Land— an excuse to strike up the band and dance on Biden’s political grave.
    Like they’re saying that millions of voters are so much alike that they all can be simply represented by 879 people. And—What people? It’s not like you can just open a phone book anymore.
    Balderdash and horse feathers.

  8. Ol’ Bob wanted two main things out of life.
    1. To play in a band. 
    2. To get the hell out of Minnesota
    Being too much of a geek with a freaky voice made him mostly unable to join a band so he had to go into the heart of the beast and establish his core Dylan-ness by learning how to write songs, which gave him the freedom to Go Electric with a band. The Band. That early story of Dylan and The Band is a ripping good yarn.

  9. Ms Petri gets serious 

    Opinion | When is a child not a child? – The Washington Post

    […]
    A child is not a child when you are forcing her to give birth. She is a woman, suddenly, and the fetus is a baby. Presto, change-o! That’s not justice, it’s sleight of hand.
    A child is not a child when she does exist but you cannot admit, now, that what you are forcing her to do is more than dangerous for someone in a body so young — it is monstrous. You scramble to make it sound as though a law that forces a 10-year-old assault victim to give birth is a good law, with benefits. Or that the law does not do what it says.
    These are men who don’t know a child from a woman, a person from a womb on two legs, because they simply do not want to know.
    This is the way they write these laws. Around actual people, and actual medicine, without a thought to the bloody and painful consequences. An ectopic pregnancy can be whisked elsewhere, in defiance of all medical science. If it’s a legitimate rape, the body has ways of shutting that whole thing down. Do not allow life, with all its tendency toward detail, to get in the way. Protect the children, at all costs. That 10-year-old is not a child, of course. She is a woman. The law is not for her. There are babies to consider! There are children to protect!
    When is a child not a child? When you are choosing not to protect her.
    But she is a child all the same.

  10. There are also women (age of majority) who require abortion services due to an intended pregnancy gone wrong.  Without medical assistance, they will suffer, may become septic, possibly lose the ability to have children in the future, oh yeah, and die.   The women who suffer and the families of those who die should sue the ever-loving F out of those who forced and who enforce this abomination of a law.    

    https://www.click2houston.com/news/texas/2022/07/15/texas-hospitals-are-putting-pregnant-patients-at-risk-by-denying-care-out-of-fear-of-abortion-laws-medical-group-says/

    “Beyond elective abortions, there are several situations in which a doctor might advise an abortion for the safety of the patient — including ectopic pregnancies, in which a fertilized egg grows outside of the uterus, making it unviable — or provide other stabilizing treatments during hypertension and preeclampsia. Delays in treatment can cause serious health complications.”

    “The Texas Medical Association is asking state regulators to step in after it says several hospitals afraid of violating the state’s abortion ban have turned away pregnant patients or delayed care leading to complications, The Dallas Morning News reported.”

    “In Central Texas, a physician was allegedly instructed to not treat an ectopic pregnancy until a rupture occurred, which puts patient health at serious risk, the letter says.”

    “The TMA letter also accused two other hospitals of telling doctors to turn away pregnant patients and send them home to “expel the fetus” if their water broke too soon, which can put them at risk of infection.”

    “Without medical assistance during a miscarriage, especially later in the pregnancy, patients face risks such as deadly hemorrhaging and sepsis.”

    Republicans are NOT pro-life.

    “Not only are patients being put at risk of serious injury, but doctors could face lawsuits or the loss of their medical licenses for not providing adequate care, the TMA letter says. Failing to do so might violate the state’s prohibition on the corporate practice of medicine, which generally prohibits corporations or nonphysicians from practicing medicine.”

    2022: The Republican War on Women and Children

  11. These streaming sticks have network news channels on them, now, so i tried to watch some, to see what people like you all see, and…
     
    Holy shit!  Stuff’s unwatchable.  Have you noticed how they never leave an image on the screen for more than 3 seconds so that a constant flickering keeps the viewer hypnotized?  And then the constant procession of other people’s misery, over and over- can’t be healthy
     
    Read your news, watch your entertainment, fuck that poll ✌️

  12. Oh- i watched European news outlets in the first few months of the Russian war against Ukraine, and those outlets employ none of those manipulative production techniques, so the mind-control style production isn’t some sort of default standard, it’s a deliberate strategy

  13. Abandonment ……….
    32 % of the Texas  cotton crop has been abandoned , the record is 36 % set in 2011 the hottest year on record .

  15. Again, if folks have a problem with POTUS Joe meeting with mBS, they should look to Republicans who have kept the US dependent on fossil fuels, and, the former, orange guy’s buddy who is waging a war against Ukraine.  I’m grateful that POTUS Joe is in the driver’s seat right now. 

  16. Most of us are conditioned to think of a baby as a joyful event which it is barring complications.

    It is that little proviso “complications” that is the fly in the ointment.  Barring various major illnesses, a woman is never closer to death than when she is pregnant.  Certainly, modern medicine has made definite advances in the field of gynecology, but it is only an advance if allowed to proceed.

    It wasn’t all that long ago that it was a regular occurrence for women or their fetus/infant to die during pregnancy/childbirth or within days of delivery.  

    My grandmother had 10 pregnancies.  One was a miscarriage.  One child died in infancy.  She managed to get eight to adulthood, but she was either pregnant or nursing from 1900 – 1922.

    My great grandmother had 13 pregnancies.  Nine lived to adulthood.  Again pregnant/nursing from 1882 to 1906

    These were both healthy women.  This idiot Republican men don’t have a clue about the female body or the horror they are visiting on the women of America.

     

     

  17. Which is why I hope there will be flurry of lawsuits against Republican lawmakers and enforcers WHEN a woman is injured or dies.   Republicans care nothing of the emotional trauma to women, but physical damage that can be proven won’t be so easy to ignore. 
    2022: The Republican War on Women and Children (There’s your campaign ad for 2022.)

  20. https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/16/asia/philippines-marcos-books-truth-rewrite-history-intl-hnk-dst/index.html

    “Filipinos living abroad are snapping up books about the late Philippine dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos, not just to read about history but to preserve it.”

    “The rush to buy books documenting Marcos’ destructive 21-year reign comes as his son, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., assumes office after a landslide election victory in May.”

    “Back in 2020, when Marcos Jr. was preparing to run for president, he made clear a desire to revise textbooks that documented his parent’s corrupt and brutal regime.”

    Heaven help us if “Bongbong” tRUMP Jr. runs for office some day.

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