ShazzieB
ShazzieB's JournalWhy Trump danced.
Much has been made of Trump doing his stupid little "dance" after reading off the names of the Uvalde victims. He's een getting a lot of ichly deserved flak about how tacky and tasteless it was, and some have commented that he seemed to be celebrating the deaths. I know it looked that way, but I don't think that's what he was doing.
To celebrate something, you have to care about it, and he doesn't care about those kids one teeny, tiny bit. He's not particularly happy that they died, any more than he's sad about it. He. Simply. Does. NOT. CARE.
To someone that severely narcissistic, everything that ever happens is all about him, always. Other people, even those closest to him, barely exist for him, except as props to be used (if possible), diparaged (if they get in his way) or ignored, in the great, magnificent spectacle that is the life of The! Incredible! Donald! J! Trump!
I'm sure that reading all the names of those slain kids was meaningless to him. It was probably somebody else's idea anyway, and he went along with it, because why not. 
So he did it. And afterwards, he was so pleased with himself that he started doing the little "dance" routine that he does at all of his rallies.
People who thought he was celebrating were right about one thing; he WAS celebrating. But he wasn't celebrating the deaths. He was celebrating himself, because to him, that’s what getting in front of a crowd of people is FOR. He was also bringing the attention of the audience back around him lest they forget who the REAL star of the show was.
I don't understand how anyone can NOT see what a truly vile, despicable, uncaring, narcissistic freak he is. I just don't get it.
Exclusive: McConnell says he has directed Cornyn to engage with Democrats on a 'bipartisan solution'
Source: CNN
Washington(CNN)Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told CNN on Thursday he met earlier in the day with Texas Sen. John Cornyn and encouraged the senior Republican senator to begin discussions with Democrats, including Sens. Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, to see if they can find a middle ground on legislation to respond to the tragic Texas elementary school shooting.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are facing enormous pressure to take action in the wake of the horrific shooting, but members on both sides acknowledge the uphill battle to find common ground given the highly polarized political climate around gun legislation and widespread GOP opposition to stricter gun control.
It is significant, though, that McConnell has decided to weigh in and is giving a greenlight to a bipartisan effort on a potential legislative response to the shooting. But it still remains to be seen what, if anything, talks will amount to given that countless mass shootings in recent years have failed to break the partisan stalemate over the issue of gun policy in Congress.
McConnell would not say specifically what the contours of that legislation should be, instead signaling he wants Cornyn to be the one to negotiate.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/26/politics/mcconnell-cornyn-democrats-bipartisan-effort-gun-violence/index.html
Not sure what this means, but it's...interesting? Personally, I will watching closely to see what transpires.
Gotta agree with this.
While I can understand and relate to the emotions behind an OP like this, I don't share the feeling of defeat, not now. I can't seem to help being a cockeyed optimist these days; I see the good stuff along with the bad. And there IS good stuff, like Beto O'Rourke confronting the craven Greg Abbott at that press conference, which was one of the most inspiring things I've seen in this country in a while.
It hasn't always been easy to stay positive, especially during the Chump years. 2 years ago, I was an absolute nervous wreck, scared to death that he would somehow finagle another electoral win and we would be stuck with him for another agonizing, interminable 4 years. When Biden actually won, it seemed like a miracle. I was afraid to believe Chump could lose, to ANYONE. After all, in 2016, I was absolutely positive that Hillary was going to win, and the universe said, "Ha ha, guess again."
But in 2020, Joe Biden WON. I was astounded, profoundly relieved, and SO happy. His win seemed so miraculous that it restored my ability to believe that good things actually CAN happen, at least sometimes, and I have managed to keep on believing that though January 6 and everything else that's happened since. And I do believe, not that everything WILL turn out for the best, but that it CAN. That's enough to keep me going, and fighting, and hoping.
I wish it could work that way for everyone, because I also believe that giving up is the last thing any of us needs right now. Look where we are: Joe Biden got elected president, and he STAYED elected president, despite all the efforts of Chump, his ragtag followers, and his cohort of crooked Republican enablers. Biden got inaugurated, he's STILL president now, and that STILL feels like a miracle to me. It really, really does.
And if that miracle happened, others could happen as well. Like flipping some Senate seats from red to blue. Like Beto becoming governor of Texas and Stacey Abrams becoming governor of .Georgia. Maybe all those things won't happen, but they could, and I am going to allow myself to hope. If I am disappointed, I'll deal with it. I can survive disappointment, but I can't live without hope. That's just how it is for me.
About 10 posts have been removed, too.
What that tells me is that there are individuals here at DU who have a transphobia problem, but there are lots of other people who object to it strenuously enough that they are willing to alert on objectionable posts and vote that DU rules have been broken when called to serve on a jury.
It absolutely sucks, imo, that ANYONE at DU is capable of being enough of an asshole to post transphobic garbage here. But it encourages me to see that there are so many people here who are willing to do the necessary work to make sure that kind of trash gets taken out. To me it says that the transphobic assholes are definitely not in the majority at DU.
To vercetti 2021: I don't know what was in those posts, because they were removed before I ever saw the thread, but I can tell from the responses that they must have been pretty horrible. I'm SO sorry they were ever posted here, and even more sorry for the pain they obviously caused you. 
But I really hope you won't let those assholes ruin DU for you. I wish I could promise you that nothing like this will ever happen here again, but you and I both know I can't. What I can promise is to always be on the lookout for his kind of garbage and alert on it as soon as I see it, every single time.
I also promise to stand with trans folks and others in the LGBTQ community, here at DU and elsewhere, support all of you in any way I can, do my best to educate the hateful and ignorant whenever the need arises.
In closing, I leave you with this: https://www.lovewhatmatters.com/6-positive-affirmations-for-every-trans-gender-non-conforming-individual-lgbtqia-mental-health-self-care-love-kindness-ally/
January 6 Committee report to be published in September!
I was messing around at Amazon, and you know how they show suggestions of other books and stuff that you might be interested in? Well, this just happened to popped up:
by Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol
Publisher : Celadon Books
Publication date : September 13, 2022
On January 6, 2021, insurgents stormed the U.S. Capitol, an act of domestic terror designed to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power without parallel in American history. In a resolution six months later, the United States House of Representatives called it "one of the darkest days of our democracy," and established a special committee to investigate how and why it happened.
Celadon Books, in collaboration with The New Yorker, presents the committee's final report, the definitive account of January 6th and what led up to it, based on more than a year of investigation by nine members of Congress and committee staff with accompanying analysis by David Remnick, editor of TheNew Yorker and winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
https://smile.amazon.com/dp/1250877520?ie=UTF8&n=133140011
It looks like they are planning this so the report comes out hot on the heels of the hearings (and before the election), which makes a lot of sense to me.
I know some people will probably post to say none of this means anything, nothing is going to come of any of this, and all the other negative stuff people say in response to any post about January 6, the Committee, the investigation, etc. Whatever, you do you. I'm posting this for those who are interested.
I am really looking forward to the hearings myself, and I, pretty sure I'm not the only one.
After 30 Years of Turning Abortion Clinics Into War Zones, Now You Want "Civility"?
After it was revealed that the Supreme Court plans to overturn Roe v. Wade, many more people joined her. Protesters have also gathered outside the homes of Justices Samuel Alito and John Roberts. With the crowds came the press coverage, and with the press coverage came the blowback.
Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, tweeted chidingly about the protests, attributing the scolding to the president himself. The Washington Post editorial board weighed in to say, “Leave the justices alone at home.” And many people tweeted similar sentiments to that of Bill Kristol, the neoconservative writer, who wrote: “Please don’t protest at people’s homes. Please don’t intrude on people attending their houses of worship. Organize politically, be civil civically.”
Demanding civility from those you seek to oppress is absurd. But considering the anti-abortion movement has, for decades, turned the front door of an abortion clinic into a war zone, it’s the height of hypocrisy.
Read the whole thing here: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/05/protest-alito-kavanaugh-roe-v-wade-abortion.html
After 30 Years of Turning Abortion Clinics Into War Zones, Now You Want "Civility"?
After it was revealed that the Supreme Court plans to overturn Roe v. Wade, many more people joined her. Protesters have also gathered outside the homes of Justices Samuel Alito and John Roberts. With the crowds came the press coverage, and with the press coverage came the blowback.
Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, tweeted chidingly about the protests, attributing the scolding to the president himself. The Washington Post editorial board weighed in to say, “Leave the justices alone at home.” And many people tweeted similar sentiments to that of Bill Kristol, the neoconservative writer, who wrote: “Please don’t protest at people’s homes. Please don’t intrude on people attending their houses of worship. Organize politically, be civil civically.”
Demanding civility from those you seek to oppress is absurd. But considering the anti-abortion movement has, for decades, turned the front door of an abortion clinic into a war zone, it’s the height of hypocrisy.
Read the whole thing here: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/05/protest-alito-kavanaugh-roe-v-wade-abortion.html
Why abortion is health care
It’s not just about extreme cases—pregnancy can have a lifelong impact on well-being.
Tiffany, whose name we have changed, is an extreme example. In conversations around abortion rights, such extreme examples often come up as to why abortion is health care. And it’s true: Abortion can be an acutely lifesaving tool.
But carrying a fetus is inherently risky, even in normal pregnancies. The risk that something will go drastically wrong for the mother in pregnancy, or that there will be harmful lifelong health consequences, is unavoidable: Fundamental evolutionary forces have etched these risks into our genes. If you talk to five pregnant people in the USA, statistically one of them will experience a potentially serious complication, like high blood pressure or gestational diabetes.
Many of us are willing to take our chances, with the support of medical care, for the joy of childbirth. But if laws erase the choicdice to have an abortion, pregnant people will be legally required to put their health, and even lives, at risk. Biology makes sure of that.
Read the rest here: https://slate.com/technology/2022/05/abortion-access-health-care-pregnancy.html
The Horrifying Implications of Alito's Most Alarming Footnote
A “domestic supply of infants” is exactly what the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment intended to abolish.
True. But the footnote reflects something profoundly wrong with the new “ethos of care” arguments advanced by Republicans who want to emphasize compassion instead of cruelty after the Dobbs fallout. Footnote 46, quantifying the supply/demand mismatch of babies, follows directly on another footnote in the opinion approvingly citing the “logic” raised at oral argument in December by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who mused that there is no meaningful hardship in conscripting women to remain pregnant and deliver babies in 2022 because “safe haven” laws allow them to drop those unwanted babies off at the fire station for other parents to adopt.
Second only to the creeping chatter of state birth control bans, the speedy pivot to celebrating forced birth and adoption is chilling. It’s chilling not just because it discounts the extortionate emotional and financial costs of childbirth and the increased medical risks of forced childbirth. It’s chilling because it lifts us out of a discussion about privacy and bodily autonomy and into a regime in which babies are a commodity and pregnant people are vessels in which to incubate them. If this sounds like a familiar, albeit noxious, economic concept– it’s because it is.
The economics of chattel slavery itself reflects a long sordid history of using women’s bodies to incubate babies for the benefit of others, and it’s no exaggeration to say that the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantees of “substantive due process” – much derided by Republicans and Alito – was an effort to put an end that practice. References to “safe havens” and the depleted domestic supply of adoptable babies are terrifying because this is exactly what the Fourteenth Amendment sought to curtail.
Read the rest here: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/05/the-alarming-implications-of-alitos-domestic-supply-of-infants-footnote.html
The Horrifying Implications of Alito's Most Alarming Footnote
A “domestic supply of infants” is exactly what the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment intended to abolish.
True. But the footnote reflects something profoundly wrong with the new “ethos of care” arguments advanced by Republicans who want to emphasize compassion instead of cruelty after the Dobbs fallout. Footnote 46, quantifying the supply/demand mismatch of babies, follows directly on another footnote in the opinion approvingly citing the “logic” raised at oral argument in December by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who mused that there is no meaningful hardship in conscripting women to remain pregnant and deliver babies in 2022 because “safe haven” laws allow them to drop those unwanted babies off at the fire station for other parents to adopt.
Second only to the creeping chatter of state birth control bans, the speedy pivot to celebrating forced birth and adoption is chilling. It’s chilling not just because it discounts the extortionate emotional and financial costs of childbirth and the increased medical risks of forced childbirth. It’s chilling because it lifts us out of a discussion about privacy and bodily autonomy and into a regime in which babies are a commodity and pregnant people are vessels in which to incubate them. If this sounds like a familiar, albeit noxious, economic concept– it’s because it is.
The economics of chattel slavery itself reflects a long sordid history of using women’s bodies to incubate babies for the benefit of others, and it’s no exaggeration to say that the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantees of “substantive due process” – much derided by Republicans and Alito – was an effort to put an end that practice. References to “safe havens” and the depleted domestic supply of adoptable babies are terrifying because this is exactly what the Fourteenth Amendment sought to curtail.
Read the rest here: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/05/the-alarming-implications-of-alitos-domestic-supply-of-infants-footnote.html
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Name: SharonGender: Female
Hometown: Chicago area, IL
Home country: USA
Member since: Tue Mar 26, 2013, 04:18 AM
Number of posts: 16,394