The New York Times on Saturday changed a headline on an article about President Joe Biden as Twitter users reacted to the phrasing in a variety of mostly negative ways.
The original headline “Biden, Still Grieving His Son, Finds That Not Everyone Wants to Hear About It” was on a Katie Rogers article about the president expressing his grief and facing some criticism over discussing his lost son while visiting with the families grieving the deaths of United States service members in the terror attack in Kabul.
The new version of the headline on the article reads: “In Invoking Beau, Biden Broaches a Loss That’s Guided His Presidency.”
Some suggested that the controversial version of the headline was not actually ever the headline, but that is not true.
That is NOT—repeat, NOT—the Times' headline. It appears to have been put atop the story by another, different site hostile to Biden.
That is a reference to one of a variety of newspaper sites that republish NYT content, such as the Boston Globe, many of which still have and have tweeted the original headline.
However, the cache, as illustrated by Christopher, in fact shows it was the actual headline at the newspaper when it first published.
By the way, National Review did this same story a few days ago. I guess they are the new assignment editor for the NYTimes:
This comes from some of the families of the service members killed in Afghanistan who reportedly angrily lashed out at Biden in a closed door ceremony and later accused him of being selfish when he brought up the loss of his own son. Grieving parents are allowed their grief so I’m not blaming them (even though I suspect they are Trump voters.)
But the media are just being assholes for flogging this story. I guess we’re in the “he can’t do anything right” phase of presidential coverage but this is ridiculous, bordering on “but her emails” territory, and it’s dangerous when you have fascism rising. The press needs to get a grip on this.
Biden is not above criticism, of course. While the shrieking, hysterical coverage of the Afghanistan withdrawal was over-the-top it was certainly a legit criticism if they had done it more professionally. But now we’re getting into the petty coverage that they love and the danger is that they’re going to “Clintonize” Biden at a time when the right wing is more dangerous than it’s ever been. I’m hoping this is just a blip. But it’s not a good sign.
As one of Madison Cawthorn’s unfortunate NC-11 constituents, I relate to Amanda Marcotte’s plea not to condemn the whole of Texas for what its reactionary leaders have wrought (thread):
I applaud business and government boycotts of Texas, but there are hard limits to this “boycott Texas” approach I see so many people advocating. Not everyone can just leave or refuse to go there.
What to do about Texas? – Lawyers, Guns & MoneyThe question of whether to have business travel, conferences, etc. to Texas and any other state that copies their Fugitive Uterus Act is a serious one: Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler announced on Friday t…https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/09/what-to-do-about-texas
My partner and I have to go home to Texas later this month to attend the memorial for a friend who died unexpectedly. (Not covid.) We can’t just say no, we’re boycotting.
People have jobs, families, homes. It was hard enough for me to leave, and I had a whole life ready waiting on the East Coast. But I love so much of Texas. And it pains me to see an entire, diverse state being demonized because it’s being run by gerrymandered Bible-thumpers.
Our friend who passed spent much of his life trying to turn Texas blue. He loved Texas and believed it could be a better place for its people, and fought hard for that. I have many friends who do such work in the state: Health care. Environmental work. Feminist activism.
I wonder instead of telling people to “leave” or “boycott,” if it wouldn’t be more helpful to focus on supporting people who are there, trying to make Texas a more just and decent place to live. Because there’s a lot of good in the place. Don’t let its idiot leaders confuse you.
Plus, if you don’t think this abortion ban is going to come closer to home, I got news for you. SCOTUS just invited every GOP-controlled state to pass this same law. God only knows what happens when the GOP uses election manipulation to regain federal power.
Isolating and shunning Texas is impractical as a solution, since they are just the canary in the coal mine. As I point out here, imposing white supremacist Christian theocracy is WHY the GOP is gutting our democracy. This shit is a national problem.
Texas better wake Democrats up Texas’ abortion ban is the first taste of what life under the GOP’s permanent minority rule will be like.https://www.salon.com/2021/09/03/texas-abortion-ban-should-wake-democrats-up-a-dystopian-hellscape-awaits-without-filibuster-reform/
Remember: Willie Nelson, Beyoncé, the Chicks, Megan Thee Stallion. All native Texans. (Among a bazillion great artists, truly: centraltrack.com/20-to-1/) It pains me to see people talk about it like it’s some useless backwater. I may not live there anymore, but #TexasForever
Counting Down The 100 Greatest Texas Musicians: 20 to 1. | Central TrackWe intended to make a list of the Top 20 musicians from Texas, but we quickly realized way too many great artists have called the Lone Star State home.https://www.centraltrack.com/20-to-1/
To be clear, I don’t think @LemieuxLGM was demonizing Texas. I just wanted to get some stuff off my chest about some rhetoric I’ve seen, mostly on social media, mocking my home and its people, or just telling people to leave entirely. That’s not how any of this works.
Ugh, I can’t believe the people bashing the whole of Texas in response to this thread. HEY IDIOTS, TEXANS ARE THE VICTIMS OF THIS ABORTION BAN. The notion that the whole state is rotten because of its leaders is backwards and illiberal. Go kick rocks. Love, This Native Texan.
The blue parts of this map may look small, but they are the biggest population centers in the state. When you damn the whole state of Texas as nothing but ignorant hicks, you are overlooking how diverse the state actually is.
Really, Texas is no different than New York or Oregon: Blue cities in a sea of red. The blue states just have slightly bigger cities in comparison to the rural/ suburban areas.
Texas is the nation. Ignore that at your peril.
It is a point I make time after time. One reason Among the reasons rural America responds poorly to lefties is their own high-and-mighty view of themselves. It’s one thing to understand emotional intelligence as a concept and another to practice it: Peers planning trips abroad will bone up on the local culture, learn some basic phrases, etc., to enhance their visits. They just won’t show voters in the next county the same courtesy. And rural voters know it.
Also, that inflated self-image means some progressives cannot be bothered with local political races they see as being beneath their manifold degrees and talents. They want to volunteer for the marquee federal races where wins will inflate their self-images even more, as well as spice up their political resumes.
But those red areas of Amanda’s map don’t just elect U.S. House members, members of the U.S. Senate, or president. They also elect school board, city council, and county commission candidates. Statewide Democratic candidates can afford to place their bets on winning big in cities where they can find the largest blocks of blue votes. But down-ballot officials are elected locally in districts, red districts.
Those lower-level officials go on to become the state representatives and senators who, where Republican majorities rule, pass draconian, white-supremacist Christian theocracy shit like they did in Texas. Voter suppression laws, too. There is little the U.S. House and Senate or president can do to stop them, and even less protection the courts afford at the moment.
Want to stop them? You have to stop them in rural, red counties where Republican candidates go unopposed and go on to dominate state legislatures. At least make Republicans spend money out there to defend what they drew to be safe seats. It’s not sexy, but it matters. Ask women in Texas.
Ignore rural America at your peril. The premise of Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy was you can’t win if you don’t show up to play. And if you do show up to play, plan to bring some game.
Grand opening of the first Dada exhibition: International Dada Fair, Berlin, 5 June 1920. The central figure hanging from the ceiling was an effigy of a German officer with a pig’s head. Via Wikipedia (Public domain).
Out where the deer and the antelope play, corn-fed Oklahomans are poisoning themselves with enough of the horse dewormer, ivermectin, for a full-sized horse.
Common sense from the internet tells them that the veterinary medication found in agricultural and tractor supply stores can fight COVID-19. Months ago, common sense from the internet told them COVID-19 itself was a hoax.
Dr. Jason McElyea tells KFOR in Oklahoma City, “There’s a reason you have to have a doctor to get a prescription for this stuff, because it can be dangerous.”
McElyea offers discouraging words, “The ERs are so backed up that gunshot victims were having hard times getting to facilities where they can get definitive care and be treated.” *
A friend found the following Facebook ad this week:
After noting “the monetize-everything-you-have economy has gone nuts,” he added, “It is a smaller step from ‘store someone’s vehicle’ to ‘be someone’s vehicle’ than you think.”
And after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision this week, unsettlingly closer for women. Because the court allowed Texas to effectively end access to abortion services in the state by outsourcing enforcement of its ban on abortion after six weeks to bounty-hunting vigilantes (Digby):
This law’s novel approach to enforcement, essentially removing the state and using what amounts to vigilantes and bounty hunters (under the promise of $10,000 for every abortion aider and abettor they bag) is essentially a form of legal secession from the U.S. Constitution. By removing the state and putting this into the realm of civil law, they can circumvent Americans’ constitutional rights by making them impossible to exercise.
Dante Atkins, principal at communications firm Atkins Strategies, tweeted perhaps the most succinct assessment of the situation in Texas: Texas Republicans are a vigilante bounty hunter death cult.
Who will be the first to the box office with the movie, Dennis Hartley?
Atkins’s title is perhaps a bit long for a marquee. But maybe not too long for an extremist folk song in the style of the offspring of an Oklahoma native.
The Texas forced-birth, vigilante bounty hunter, death cult, anti-immigrant movement, and all you got to do to join is to sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar.
With no feeling.
* UPDATE (as of 12:21 EDT):
Northeastern Hospital System Sequoyah has since issued the following statement:
Although Dr. Jason McElyea is not an employee of NHS Sequoyah, he is affiliated with a medical staffing group that provides coverage for our emergency room. With that said, Dr. McElyea has not worked at our Sallisaw location in over 2 months. NHS Sequoyah has not treated any patients due to complications related to taking ivermectin. This includes not treating any patients for ivermectin overdose. All patients who have visited our emergency room have received medical attention as appropriate. Our hospital has not had to turn away any patients seeking emergency care. We want to reassure our community that our staff is working hard to provide quality healthcare to all patients. We appreciate the opportunity to clarify this issue and as always, we value our community’s support.
Nevertheless, ivermectin poison control calls are also being reported in AL, FL, GA, KS, KY, MN, TX, WI, and Australia. Not all calls to poison control centers represent actual poisonings.
“The reason that society changes is not because ideas are good or ideas are bad. The reason society changes is because powerful people are forced to make concessions when people who don’t otherwise have power stand up.”
– Adaner Usmani, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Harvard, from The Big Scary ‘S’ Word.
Climatologist Michael E. Mann was a guest on MSNBC’s The Reid Out this past Thursday, where he was part of a panel discussion regarding Hurricane Ida’s impact on New Orleans earlier in the week and the related storm system that caused severe flash flooding in several Northeast states a few days later. He made this interesting observation:
Those who had the least role in creating [climate change-fueled extreme weather events] …those are the folks who have the least wealth; future generations, people in the developing world and the global South are bearing the brunt of the impacts, because they have the least resilience, they have the least resources to deal with this problem. […] Climate action is a matter of social justice.
Wait…what? “Climate action is a matter of social justice”?! How did Professor Mann draw the chalk from Hurricane Ida to Karl Marx in one fell swoop? Of course, I’m being facetious. I mean, no one is silly enough to conflate “social justice” with “socialism”. Right? For giggles, let’s Google “social justice” and “socialism”, and see what pops up:
Conservative TV personality Glenn Beck told Christians, “I beg you, look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church website. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words… If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish. Go alert your bishop.”
Unfortunately, statements such as this have left even Catholics, who enjoy a rich social justice tradition, confused.
Socialism is defined as economic or political theories that advocate collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods. The threat perceived by socialism is that it threatens the identity of the individual because it merges the masses into one common goal or voice.
Social justice isn’t an economic or political theory, but an outlook that seeks to strengthen the identity of the individual because it sees that human dignity derives its meaning from being made in God’s image (Gen. 1:26). In God’s image, no one is worth more than another. All are deserving of life and whatever is needed to adequately sustain it.
I’m not a particularly religious person, but I think that last line is a nice tenet. Very nice.
“Oh, a sleeping drunkard Up in Central Park, And a lion-hunter In the jungle dark, And a Chinese dentist, And a British queen– All fit together In the same machine. Nice, nice, very nice; Nice, nice, very nice; Nice, nice, very nice– So many different people In the same device.”
–Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., from Cat’s Cradle
So if everyone from the authors of a 3000 year-old book of the bible to a prominent 20th Century science fiction writer can reach a consensus that all human beings are all equally worthy, all deserving of life, and all fit together in the same machine…how is it that the very mention of the word “socialism” has become anathema to so many folks these days?
Something to do with our current political climate, perhaps?
In a Director’s Statement regarding her new documentary The Big Scary ‘S’ Word, Yael Bridge writes:
…during the 2016 election cycle, I was personally fascinated by how Bernie Sanders appealed to people who would otherwise vote for Donald Trump, and the vast common ground between two ostensibly opposed political stances rocked me. I realized there is an urgent need for an honest, accessible exploration of today’s socialist ideas as they are being mobilized in America, as well as their historical precedents.
Before you get too excited, Bridge’s film is not all about Bernie. That said, Senator Sanders does pop up several times, as does Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Seattle City Councilwoman Kshama Sawant, Professor Cornel West, author Naomi Klein, and other high-profile politicos and activists.
However, if the film has any “stars”, they are two lesser-known figures. They are Stephanie Price, an Oklahoma school teacher and single mom driven to activism, and Democratic Socialist Lee Carter, an ex-Marine who has represented the 50th district in the Virginia House of Delegates since 2018 (frustrated by his travails stemming from a debilitating work injury and no workman’s comp coverage, he launched his political career by Googling “how do I run for office?”).
In addition to eye-opening contemporary illustrations of pragmatic and robust socialist experiments like worker cooperatives and the Bank of North Dakota, there’s a compact history of American socialism, illustrating how key milestones like FDR’s New Deal and the labor movement continue to benefit all of us to this day (Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, better wages, reasonable work hours, workplace safety, etc.).
Some may register the breezy and amiable tone of Bridges’ documentary as a superficial approach, but it prevents the exercise from developing into a dry lecture. I bet you’ll even pick up one or two fun facts along the way (did you know that the Republican party was founded by socialists? I didn’t.). At any rate, there’s absolutely nothing here to fear here except…oh, never mind.
THE BIG SCARY ‘S’ WORD is available on digital platforms and in select theaters.
You’ve worked hard, so here’s a holiday bonus…my Top 10 Labor Day movies:
Blue Collar– Director Paul Schrader co-wrote this 1978 drama with his brother Leonard. Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto portray Motor City auto worker buddies tired of getting the short end of the stick from both their employer and their union. In a fit of drunken pique, they pull an ill-advised caper that gets them in trouble with both parties, ultimately putting friendship and loyalty to the test.
Akin to Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront, Schrader subverts the standard “union good guy, company bad guy” trope with shades of gray, reminding us the road to Hell is sometimes paved with good intentions. Great score by Jack Nitzsche and Ry Cooder, with a memorable theme song featuring Captain Beefheart (“I’m jest a hard-woikin’, fucked-over man…”).
El Norte – Gregory Nava’s portrait of Guatemalan siblings who make their way to the U.S. after their father is killed by a government death squad will stay with you after credits roll. The two leads deliver naturalistic performances as a brother and sister who maintain optimism, despite fate and circumstance thwarting them at every turn. Claustrophobes be warned: a harrowing scene featuring an encounter with a rat colony during an underground border crossing is nightmare fuel. Do not expect a Hollywood ending; this is an unblinking look at the shameful exploitation of undocumented workers.
The Grapes of Wrath – John Ford’s powerful 1940 drama (adapted from John Steinbeck’s novel) is the quintessential film about the struggle of America’s salt of the earth during the Great Depression. Perhaps we can take comfort in the possibility that no matter how bad things get, Henry Fonda’s unforgettable embodiment of Tom Joad will “…be there, all around, in the dark.” Ford followed up with the Oscar-winning How Green Was My Valley (1941) another drama about a working class family (set in a Welsh mining town).
Harlan County, USA – Barbara Kopple’s award-winning film is not only an extraordinary document about an acrimonious coal miner’s strike in Harlan County, Kentucky in 1973, but is one of the best American documentaries ever made. Kopple’s film has everything that you look for in any great work of cinema: drama, conflict, suspense, and redemption. Kopple and crew are so deeply embedded that you may involuntarily duck during a harrowing scene where a company-hired thug fires a round directly toward the camera operator (it’s a wonder the filmmakers lived to tell this tale).
Made in Dagenham – Based on a true story, this 2011 film (directed by Nigel Cole and written by William Ivory) stars Sally Hawkins as Rita O’Grady, a working mum employed at the Dagenham, England Ford plant in 1968. She worked in a run-down, segregated section of the plant where 187 female machinists toiled away for a fraction of what male employees were paid; the company justified the inequity by classifying female workers as “unskilled labor”. Encouraged by her empathetic shop steward (Bob Hoskins), the initially reticent Rita finds her “voice” and surprises family, co-workers and herself with a formidable ability to rally the troops and affect real change. An engaging ensemble piece with a standout supporting performance by Miranda Richardson as a government minister.
Matewan – This well-acted, handsomely mounted drama by John Sayles serves as a sobering reminder that much blood was spilled to lay the foundation for the labor laws we take for granted in the modern workplace. Based on a true story, it is set during the 1920s, in West Virginia. Chris Cooper plays an outsider labor organizer who becomes embroiled in a conflict between coal company thugs and fed up miners trying to unionize.
Sayles delivers a compelling narrative, rich in characterizations and steeped in verisimilitude (beautifully shot by Haskell Wexler). Fine ensemble work from a top notch cast that includes David Strathairn, Mary McDonnell, James Earl Jones, Joe Grifasi, Jane Alexander, Gordon Clapp, and Will Oldham. The film is also notable for its well-curated Americana soundtrack.
Modern Times – Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 masterpiece about man vs. automation has aged well. This probably has everything to do with his embodiment of the Everyman. Although referred to as his “last silent film”, it’s not 100% so. There’s no dialogue, but Chaplin finds ingenious ways to work in lines (via technological devices). His expert use of sound effects in this film is unparalleled, particularly in a classic sequence where Chaplin, a hapless assembly line worker, literally ends up “part of the machine”. Paulette Goddard (then Mrs. Chaplin) is on board for the pathos. Brilliant, hilarious and prescient.
Norma Rae – Martin Ritt’s 1979 film about a minimum-wage textile worker (Sally Field) turned union activist helped launch what I refer to as the “Whistle-blowing Working Mom” genre (Silkwood, Erin Brockovich, etc). Field gives an outstanding performance (and deservedly picked up a Best Actress Oscar) as the eponymous heroine who gets fired up by a passionate labor organizer from NYC (Ron Leibman, in his best role). Inspiring and empowering, bolstered by a fine screenplay (by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr.) and a great supporting cast that includes Beau Bridges, Pat Hingle and Barbara Baxley.
On the Waterfront – “It wuz you, Chahlee.” The betrayal! And the pain. It’s all there on Marlon Brando’s face as he delivers one of the most oft-quoted monologues in cinema history. Brando leads an exemplary cast that includes Rod Steiger, Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden and Eva Marie Saint in this absorbing portrait of a New York dock worker who takes a virtual one-man stand against a powerful and corrupt union official. The trifecta of Brando’s iconic performance, Elia Kazan’s direction, and Budd Schulberg’s well-constructed screenplay adds up to one of the finest American social dramas of the 1950s.
Roger and Me – While our favorite lib’rul agitprop director has made a number of films addressing the travails of wage slaves and ever-appalling indifference of the corporate masters who grow fat off their labors, Michael Moore’s low-budget 1989 debut film remains his best (and is on the list of the top 25 highest-grossing docs of all time).
Moore may have not been the only resident of Flint, Michigan scratching his head over GM’s local plant shutdown in the midst of record profits for the company, but he was the one with the chutzpah (and a camera crew) to make a beeline straight to the top to demand an explanation. His target? GM’s chairman, Roger Smith. Does he bag him? Watch it and find out. An insightful portrait of working class America that, like most of his subsequent films, can be at once harrowing and hilarious, yet hopeful and humanistic.
This is kind of hilarious considering the absolutely brutal coverage of Hillary Clinton’s presidential runs:
In a unanimous vote, the bipartisan Federal Election Commission dismissed a complaint alleging the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign broke the law by soliciting favorable media coverage.
Several prominent reporters and media personalities were mentioned in the complaint, including Maggie Haberman of The New York Times, John Harwood of CNN (formerly of CNBC, where he was during the 2016 campaign), as well as outlets such as The Boston Globe, Politico, NBC, and Univision.
Although former Intercept editor Glenn Greenwald wrote that “Haberman’s stories were more sophisticated, nuanced, and even somewhat more critical than what the Clinton memo envisioned,” the complaint from Tony Dane of Virginia used the article to support broader accusations of illegal donations.
“We believe it is apparent on the face of the Complaint that it is without merit,” Dana Green, a Times legal consultant, wrote to the FEC in response to the complaint back in 2018. “The exhibits attached to the Complaint do not support Mr. Dane’s assertions and the two articles Ms. Haberman identified in Mr. Dane’s complaint plainly are not coordinated communications or contributions to the Clinton campaign subject to the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended.”
Dane’s complaint included multiple typos and insisted the FEC needed to act before Election Day in 2016 because the Clinton campaign was breaking campaign finance laws by using favorable media coverage as an unpaid or “in-kind” donation.
Other evidence in the complaint involved leaked emails from Clinton campaign staff planning off the record parties for media personalities.
Dane submitted the complaint on his own behalf and not that of the Trump campaign.
While the cozy tone in some of the emails drew criticism from Trump allies who were frustrated at what they saw as a double standard in campaign coverage, not one member of the FEC board voted against closing the file on the complaint.
Everything about that story is ridiculous. All of it. But it’s an excellent compendium of everything that’s wrong with journalism and politics. The only surprise is that the FEC vote was unanimous. Will wonders never cease.
I’ve been wondering who came up with the legal framework for the Texas vigilante law. The WSJ profiled him:
Behind a Texas law that has confounded legal scholars and given abortion opponents hope is a publicity-shy, 45-year-old West Coast litigator known for his command of abstruse legal theory.
The Texas Heartbeat Act has survived a brush with the Supreme Court and made Texas the most restrictive in the nation for abortion access, thanks largely to its unusual enforcement scheme. The law puts ordinary Texans—not any government official—in charge of enforcing a prohibition on performing or aiding abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, making it more difficult to challenge in court.
But the senator said he also wanted to avoid the fate of those other bills, which were all struck down by judges who said the laws placed an undue burden on women seeking an abortion before the fetus was viable. District attorneys in Texas’ more liberal cities were already saying they wouldn’t enforce abortion bans in the event of a Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. So Mr. Hughes wanted a bill that could remain effective even without prosecutions.
“We knew we had to have another way,” said Mr. Hughes, chairman of the chamber’s influential Senate State Affairs policy-making committee. “We were going to find a way to pass a heartbeat bill that was going to be upheld.”
Some legal scholars, including conservatives, are dubious that the Texas law can survive a more sustained legal review and expect courts—either at the federal or state level—to halt it with some kind of general injunction. But they say Mr. Mitchell still has defied the odds by seeing the law go into effect.
“He would have been a pretty successful legal academic,” said Ilya Somin, a George Mason University law professor and former colleague of Mr. Mitchell’s. “He’s a creative legal thinker.”
Mr. Mitchell has taught law at several law schools, including George Mason University and Stanford Law School, before entering state government in 2010 as the Texas’ solicitor general under Gov. Rick Perry. He left the job when Mr. Perry’s tenure ended. In 2017, President Donald Trump said he would tap Mr. Mitchell to lead the Administrative Conference of the United States, an obscure federal agency that advises on administrative law and regulatory procedures. But his confirmation never came up for a vote.
In 2018, Mr. Mitchell drafted “The Writ-of-Erasure Fallacy,” a Virginia Law Review article that articulated the legal theories that would eventually find their way into the Texas abortion law. The article was a deep dive into the subject of judicial review and raised the idea that when a court rules a statute unconstitutional, the law isn’t erased from the books and could be modified to allow for “private enforcement.”
He described how laws could be constructed to “enable private litigants to enforce a statute even after a federal district court has enjoined the executive from enforcing it,” without going in-depth about the applicability to abortion laws.
After opening a solo law practice, Mr. Mitchell extended the idea to abortion in 2019 when he advised an antiabortion East Texas pastor in drafting an ordinance adopted by a number of smaller Texas cities, including the city of Lubbock, that allowed Texas citizens to obtain an injunction against anyone performing or helping to carry out an abortion. Efforts by abortion-rights advocates to stop enforcement of the Lubbock ordinance failed in federal court, where a judge ruled that the plaintiff, Planned Parenthood, couldn’t sue the government over the law.
The Texas Heartbeat Act, or SB 8, as the Texas law is known, is a legal labyrinth of statutory construction that has confounded some of the legal profession’s most seasoned minds. Abortion-rights activists have denounced the law as diabolical, while some legal scholars have marveled at its creative clauses.
In a typical challenge to an antiabortion law, abortion-rights advocates can sue government officials tasked with enforcing the statute and wage their fights in courts and regions of their choosing. SB 8, which many Republican lawyers in the statehouse helped shape into its final form, turns the table on the geographic advantage. Claimants can sue on their home turf, even if the abortion-provider defendant is located elsewhere, and avoid courts in more Democratic areas. With no government official to sue, plaintiffs lack standing to move pre-emptively against the laws.
The law brims with financial enticements for claimants and their lawyers. The law sets a floor for damages at $10,000 per unlawful abortion but sets no limit on how much money claimants can recover. If they prevail, they can also demand the losing party pay their legal bills. If they lose in court and their case is dismissed, they owe the defendant nothing.
The law permits multiple lawsuits to be filed by different individuals over a single abortion. Once a claimant collects damages, though, the others suing may not collect more money from the same defendant for the same violation.
The Republican-led state Senate and House passed the measure in May with votes almost entirely split along party lines. Between the two chambers, only two Democrats voted for the bill. No Republicans voted against the ban. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed the bill on May 19, and it went into effect Wednesday.
In an unsigned 5-4 order, the Supreme Court declined to block the law from taking effect. The conservative majority wrote that there were “serious questions regarding the constitutionality of the Texas law” but said the court might lack the jurisdiction to act because of procedural technicalities. The three liberal justices and Chief Justice John Roberts filed dissents.
We’ll see how brilliant they all think it is when states start passing similar laws to ban gun ownership. Or MAGA hats. Or churches. Oh, no one will try to have the state enforce those laws. That would be unconstitutional. They’ll just let private citizens sue all the enablers, the gun store salesmen, the hat makers and distributors, the cab company that allows its drivers to ferry people to church. You get the drift.
Should be fun to watch how they twist themselves into pretzels to say that this theory applies to abortion but not these other cases.
Last night I downloaded the latest Census Bureau July-August week 34 PULSE data. Over two cups of coffee, I ran the obvious multivariable logistic regressions to examine who is now fully vaccinated against COVID…
I’m sure Reviewer 2 would order due refinements to my quick analysis, were it immediately submitted for peer-review publication. My capacious study limitations section would note the inherent challenges of population surveys to gauge contentious questions like this. These data surely include response biases and likely overstate the true prevalence of COVID vaccination.
The overall patterns and disparities remain clear enough. Of course, we see huge disparities across regions, by education and by income. A bit more surprising: One group appears especially vulnerable and requires specific outreach…Yup. We must formulate culturally competent public health messaging for heterosexual non-Hispanic white Americans. This group conspicuously lags in vaccination status.
Among self-identified male respondents, heterosexual men were almost four times as likely to report not to be fully vaccinated (19%) as were gay men (5%)–an absolute different quite similar to the gradient observed between men with incomes less than $25,000 and those with incomes between $75,000 and $100,000.I know that there daunting obstacles to reaching this disparity-population of heterosexual American men. We can’t let these barriers deter us.
He suggests that outreach by people like Mitch McConnell is helpful. Maybe. But these are Trump cult members who are told by their Dear Leader that Mitch McConnell is the dumbest man in congress. And Dear Leader is backing way off the vaccines now:
Former President Trump said he “probably won’t” get a third shot of the COVID-19 vaccine if several health regulators agree to authorize it for use among most Americans.
Trump told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published Friday, “I feel like I’m in good shape from that standpoint—I probably won’t.”
“I’ll look at stuff later on,” he added. “I’m not against it, but it’s probably not for me.”
He got booed at his last rally for suggesting that people take the vaccine. He won’t take that risk again.
This latest tracks with his comments about masks in the spring of 2020. We all know where that led. So I’m not expecting that any outreach is going to make a difference for the refusniks. They will continue to get it and spread and die from it. Nohing will stop them from their one mission in life: owning the libs.
This from Adam Serwer in the Atlantic newsletter is right on:
A new draconian abortion law, which encourages Texans to spy on their neighbors for evidence of forbidden behavior, went into effect Wednesday. Texas Republicans have trumpeted the importance of personal responsibility and individual liberty when fighting coronavirus-mitigation efforts in a state where several thousand Texans died just last month. But when it comes to abortion, the same Republicans have eagerly invoked the power of the state in one of the most personal decisions someone can make, while seeking to bribe state residents to act as informants against anyone who would exercise their constitutional right to end their pregnancy and anyone who might help them do so.
I wanted to call attention this week not only to the dubious nature of the Supreme Court majority’s reasoning in allowing the Texas law to go into effect, flouting decades of precedent, but to the venue for this immensely consequential decision. Over the past few years, the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket,” the decisions it makes outside its regular procedure, has become a means for Republican officials to get the results they want as fast as possible. Through the Court’s shadow docket, Donald Trump was able to keep many of his most cruel and controversial policies in place as they were challenged in court. The Biden administration has had much worse luck on the shadow docket, which is no surprise given the Court’s ideological composition.
As the past few months have revealed, Trump’s departure from the White House did not by itself deliver the United States from many of the crises facing the country—the pandemic, the halting economic recovery, or the growing danger to representative democracy. Americans are still fighting over what kind of nation they want to live in. Whether it’s the growing boldness of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, the underlying political dynamics driving Texas’s response to the coronavirus, or the battle over voting rights, these conflicts are ongoing …
Indeed. Trump brought all of this into stark relief but the polarization (caused by right wing media IMO) has been growing for a quarter century or more and it continues apace with social media.
Serwer’s full article is here. And yes, the Supreme Court is as thoroughly corrupt as all the other right wing institutions. What did we expect would happen when such a corrupt ideology took over the majority?
The rise in people using ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug usually reserved for deworming horses or livestock, as a treatment or preventative for Covid-19 has emergency rooms “so backed up that gunshot victims were having hard times getting” access to health facilities, an emergency room doctor in Oklahoma said.
This week, Dr. Jason McElyea told KFOR the overdoses are causing backlogs in rural hospitals, leaving both beds and ambulance services scarce.
“The ERs are so backed up that gunshot victims were having hard times getting to facilities where they can get definitive care and be treated,” McElyea said.
“All of their ambulances are stuck at the hospital waiting for a bed to open so they can take the patient in and they don’t have any, that’s it,” said McElyea. “If there’s no ambulance to take the call, there’s no ambulance to come to the call.”
Between Ivermectin fools and anti-vax idiots I sometimes feel as if I’m in an unusually surreal nightmare. WTF???
Protester at Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education meeting in August. Andre Broussard for The Daily Advertiser
Election security advocate Jennifer Cohn caught my attention with this brief video and Twitter thread. She sees the the aggressive tactics on display from angry conservatives at school board meetings as driven by a national agenda.
The GOP wants to take over all public school boards. CRT and mask mandates are a pretext, which they use to manipulate low information people to help them. This has been a long term GOP goal. They want to take over public education. So they can kill it. 1/pic.twitter.com/adO5roYLNR
In a maneuver we’ve seen before with T-party, the school board protests, Cohn alleges, are driven by a national agenda. Cohn cites a piece from Right Wing Watch:
An email promoting an online presentation about the Leadership Institute’s new training sessions, which begin on Aug. 9, declares that “conservatives are preparing a school board takeover and you can get involved.” The presentation was made by the Leadership Institute’s director of international trainings Ron Nehring, a protégé of anti-tax activist Grover Norquist who ran as a Republican candidate for Lt. Gov. of California in 2014 and served as a spokesman for Sen. Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign.
“The left has spent many years and vast funding to stack local school boards,” the Leadership Institute’s website claims. “America’s children suffer the effects of this liberal domination every day.” The group adds, “Patriotic Americans must take back the schools.”
This pattern dates back decades:
Religious-right activists and other right-wing groups have long viewed public schools and colleges as culture-war battlegrounds. This year’s campaign to mobilize school board takeovers is reminiscent of school board wars that raged during the 1990s, when religious-right groups made a determinedeffort to take over school boards across the country to combat what they claimed was liberal indoctrination in schools.
Cohn also cites a blog post by public-education-advocate Diane Ravitch from June. Ravitch warns parents to beware of astroturf education groups funded by right-wing billionaires. Jeanne Melvin of Ohio’s Parent Education Partners offers a guide to spotting these groups:
Melvin names names. She calls out “Parents Defending Education,” “Freedom Works,” “Parents Rights in Education,” and “Moms for Liberty,” among others. Some of they may be at work in your state, representing themselves as ordinary parents who want “change.” The change they want is privatization, not better public schools. Before you get involved in any parent group, find out what their budget is and who pays the salaries and how many leaders have salaries.
It is probably a mistake to assume all those showing up at recent protests are astroturf groups there on direct orders from “national,” whatever that may be. Like T-party members, they’ve been sent signals via Fox News, conservative talk radio, or social media that all right-thinking Americans need to show up at school board meetings to beat back the commie-socialist-globalist-masker threat. They then organize locally.
