kneeling on a football field

good when you think your magical sky fairy daddy cares one shit about your pointless sport

bad when you are protesting the same injustices that jesus would protest

OK, I’m waiting for the 1st Islamic soccer coach to take his or her team to midfield during halftime, bow, and say; praise Allah!

3, came here to say the same thing.

As if all this isn’t bad enough, it’s only gonna be in the 60s the next couple days. Ugh.

News item not covered - Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying that children in the womb will be as safe as children in the classroom.
When the actual news item reads as an Onion headline, you know we’ve hit the end times!

The pat on Giuliani's back was no more severe than Nancy Pelosi's gentle nudge on Rep. Flores daughter to move over bit.

@5 Also, a Congresswoman called the Dobbs decision a "victory for white life" at a Trump rally! Her campaign later claimed she meant to say "right to life" but the audience cheered enthusiastically nonetheless, and Trump himself just stood behind her grinning. (Personally I thought it would be about a week before someone blurted the quiet part out loud, but it didn't even take two days.)

We’ve got to vote all of the Republinazis out of office, flip House seats, Senate seats, Governors mansions, and state legislatures, and then pressure them into passing legislation that will save our rights.
That takes money—so what’s the alternative?
With the Women’s Marches and Black Lives Matters protests, we had the largest mass action demonstrations in this nation’s history, and we didn’t get shit. In fact, we’re still careening violently backwards.
Republinazis don’t give a flying fuck about protests; they see them as another welcome opportunity to satisfy their bloodlust by having the cops beat, gas, and shoot us.
Voting matters, otherwise they wouldn’t be trying so desperately to steal elections and stop us from doing it.

"Let’s build that lid. The Lid I-5 project will hold a public walking tour this afternoon at 5:30 pm, with special guest Senate Transpo Chair Marko Liias."

Let's take whatever energy there may be around putting a lid over I-5 and channel it toward something that might actually have a tangible effect in terms of giving Seattleites viable alternatives to driving, and that's getting Sound Transit 3 built right and built faster. That includes the second downtown transit tunnel, the Ballard extension, and the West Seattle extension.

Right now the dream of putting a lid over I-5 serves only two purposes:
1. It funds the consultants to do their studies.
2. It distracts us from the real work already underway, like ST3.

Actually, giving $$ and consistently voting is exactly what we need to do. It is what the right-wingers did to get into the position of power they are in and we need to catch up. Vote, vote, vote. Every damn time. NEVER for any Republican.

@9 I'm no fan of Sawant, Nader or Stein, but Sawant did no real harm. Gore and HRC both carried Washington by comfortable margins and received the state's electoral votes. Regardless, if your entire contribution to the discussion over where we go from here is going to be to pointlessly re-litigate long-ago elections, you might as well join her insular little group. Or else start charging rent for letting her live in your head.

"and the best that many of them could do was basically “give us $15 and vote harder.”

And they are right. This is the consequences of 2016 and there is nothing else to say about it.

I watched the live stream of AOC and her list of things to do. Yes. Do all those things. But ultimately the only thing that matters is re-taking congress and retaking the SCOTUS. Everything else can be undone immediately. And AOC knows it.

Three members of the court perjured themselves and have invalidated all Stare Decisis precedent. The entire legal concept. If fifty years of precedent is meaningless they all are. This is unprecedented. Though totally predictable.

That means all the whinging and complaining about "what did the democrats do since 1973" perfectly idiotic. What they did was keep all those rights intact. That's what they did. Because the system was always hanging by a thread. Always.

And sorry. "Codifying" abortion into federal law would've been totally overturned by this ruling. Your rights were always loans. Not entitlements. And the system is so broken and so reliant on everyone participating in good faith, on norms, that it was only a matter of time until the republicans became the fascists they always wanted to be. So sorry that would not have worked.

There were always only two options.

A) Keep congress and the presidency in democratic hands. And hope the stars aligned that they get to appoint justices. And you get your loan renewed for maybe a couple decades.

B) Or pass a constitutional amendment.

And the likelihood of B is infinitesimal.

So now the BEST we can do is a patchwork of flimsy bandaids like putting a couple of clinics on federal land (which will place workers at risk of being arrested for murde and they will be defunded immediatly), try to impeach the justices who purged themselves (which will not work because there is not the votes nor the mechanism to remove — them but should be done anyway), and fund abortion in states where it's still legal (which will still open up healthcare workers to legal reprisals should they go to states that deem that murder now).

It's all deck chairs on the Titanic.

The third party and having purity and integrity was all a fantasy. This system is all you got. And now even that is 80% gone. If you thought this was revenge or accelerationsist strategy to bring about a workers paradise you have a brutal wake up call over the next decade if we don't get democrats control of congress. Brutal. I don't care if you don't believe me. That's your cognitive dissonance and you are eating ashes now. It's done.

Option A was it.

Anyone that voted third party or didn't vote or voted for republicans in 2016 this is the consequence. And it's going to get worse. Much. Much worse. They told you so and you laughed it off. I hope it worth it to stick it to the mean lady and her emailz. Because you fucked everyone including yourselves.

Well. Unless you are insane in ten years you won't be laughing.

@11,

Yeah, there's frustratingly little that ordinary citizens can do. Demonstrations and protests are fine, but it's naive to think they'll foment meaningful change to the broader and backward-ass federal systems that drive policies. I'd mentioned this before, but I really think we just need to continue to beat the drum that calls attention to the fundamentally undemocratic (and backward-ass) institutions that continue to sit on their collective ass and/or enact policies that benefit a minority of the citizenry. Need to get that type of messaging into mainstream institutions and I don't know how you do that except to continue to discuss and talk about it incessantly, in hopes that the information eventually filters upward to people who can actually do something with it. Which also feels frustratingly fruitless and naive, even as a write this.

@13 "I'm no fan of Sawant, Nader or Stein, but Sawant did no real harm. "

This is a facile view. Of course she did harm. I voted for her. But her refusal to endorse Clinton did not stop at Washington borders. She has a large network of socialist supporters all over the US. And she most certainly lost Clinton votes i other states. Because as one the handful of successful leftists she one of the Defacto heads of the Socialist movement in the US.

And we are not talking about "long ago." We are talking about 2016. And consequences take decades. And everyone who did not vote Clinton need thier faces rubbed in the dirt. Becuase these are the consequences. And they are not gong to be undone by twitter wars or underground abortion railways or feel good protests or law suits.

It's done. And if you can't remember consequences you will repeat the same mistake over and over.

In this system all you have are democrats. Nash your teeth. Pull your hair. Cream all you want. I'm there with you. But this is the reality. And we have to face it. Democrats as they are right now, as fucked as they are right now, are they best you are going to get for decades.

The people saying that funds used to lid I-5 would be better spent addressing more pressing problems like houselessness are missing the point -- building a brand new billion-dollar park downtown IS providing new housing for the houseless!

@14: "And sorry. "Codifying" abortion into federal law would've been totally overturned by this ruling."

Perhaps so, but I don't think that's a certainty. It seems that having a law passed by the congress and signed by the president has its own constitutional legitimacy that the other branch of government, the Supreme Court, would have flimsier precedent to overturn the law.

Ah. Never missing a beat to blame the lib tars, right District.

" why didn't the Dems ever actually codify it into law? "

Jesus. How dumb are you? Because it's not some magic spell. Saying "codify" doesn't change how this decision works. It would've been overturned by this SCOTUS decision anyway.

The rest of course I didn't read because it's the same stupid bullshit with you every time.

And I don't think RogerTheShubber is a reincarnation of Professor_Hiztory who was a far more volatile bragging hothead - unless he took anger management training.

@17, all we've ever elected are moderates. this is what we have to show for it. this is the path down which the third way leads.

@23: Given that the majority of the electorate is moderate, that's how democracy works.

@24, calling our system a democracy is pretty dubious, considering land and money have more voting power than people. But I do agree with you, this is the country most people want, whether they are actively working towards it, complicit in it, or apathetic about it.

@21 I disagree. If it had been passed by congress and signed by the president as #20 mentions on what basis could the court overturn it? Here's a newsflash for you. They don't overturn laws just because they don't like them they overturn them based on legal grounds which is why Obamacare is still going despite the efforts of many states to gut that. Harp on the court all you want but this is an issue that needs to be decided in the legislature.

@22 He's the professor. He's just a bit more muted lest he get kicked off again.

Fascists In Our Midst

Supreme Court rulings, including the overturning of Roe v. Wade, herald the ascendancy of Christian fascism in the United States.

The Supreme Court is relentlessly funding and empowering Christian fascism. It not only overturned Roe v. Wade, ending a constitutional right to an abortion, but ruled on June 21 that Maine may not exclude religious schools from a state tuition program.

It has ruled that a Montana state program to support private schools must include religious schools. It ruled that a 40-foot cross could remain on state property in suburban Maryland.

It upheld the Trump administration regulation allowing employers to deny birth control coverage to female employees on religious grounds.

It ruled that employment discrimination laws do not apply to teachers at religious schools. It ruled that a Catholic social services agency in Philadelphia could ignore city rules and refuse to screen same-sex couples applying to take in foster children.

It neutered the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It watered down laws allowing workers to combat sexual and racial harassment in court. It reversed century-old campaign finance restric­tions to permit corpor­a­tions, private groups and oligarchs to spend unlim­ited funds on elec­tions, a system of legalized bribery, in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission.

Chris Hedges

tonnes More
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/fascists-in-our-midst

one more from Hedges'
'Fascists In Our Midst'

Fascists promise moral renewal, a return to a lost golden age. They use campaigns of moral purity to justify state repression. Adolf Hitler, days after he took power in January 1933, imposed a ban on all homosexual organizations.

He ordered raids on homosexual clubs and bars, including the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin, and the permanent exile of its director, Magnus Hirschfeld.

Thousands of volumes from the institute’s library were tossed into a bonfire. This “moral cleansing” was cheered on by the German public, including German churches.

But the tactics, outside
the law, swiftly legitimized
what would soon be done to others.

The billionaire class, while sometimes socially liberal, dispossessed working men and women through deindustrialization, austerity, a legalized tax boycott, looting the U.S. Treasury and deregulation. It triggered the widespread despair and rage that pushed many of the betrayed into the arms of these con artists and demagogues.

It is more than willing to accommodate the Christian fascists, even if it means abandoning the liberal veneer of inclusiveness. It has no intention of supporting social equality, which is why it thwarted the candidacy of Bernie Sanders.

In the end, even the liberal class will choose fascism over empowering the left-wing and organized labor. The only thing the ruling oligarchy truly cares about is unfettered exploitation and profit. They, like the industrialists in Nazi Germany, will happily make an alliance with the Christian fascists, no matter how bizarre and buffoonish, and embrace the blood sacrifices of the condemned.

--Chris Hedges

tonnes More
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/fascists-in-our-midst

I-5 through Seattle will not be lidded in the foreseeable future. It would be prohibitively expensive to build to meet current safety regulations for road tunnels allowing hazardous materials transport like gasoline tankers, liquid ammonia, liquid chlorine, etc…

@14 - this ruling would have done nothing to overturn a federal law codifying abortion rights. The Court said that abortion was not a right guaranteed by the Constitution and that it should be decided by the people's elected representatives. That of course means that in the Confederacy and it's modern expansion to the Midwest, said representatives would decide against it. But a federal law codifying Roe would pre-empt any state restrictions.

@15 - ordinary citizens coughing up money, voting, and badgering their elected reps is EXACTLY how the republicans did this. They played a long game, kept on message, and worked to elect everyone from dogcatcher on up. We need to fucking do the same. Yes, big corporate money plays a big part in getting Republicans elected. But the Republicans getting elected are not pro-forced birth because Exxon wants them to be. They are pro-forced birth because the base simply won't shut up about it and they are the ones who are electable, big money or no. We need to do exactly the same with one issue - maybe health care, maybe minimum wage, whatever- for a couple of decades. No more bickering because the nominee is not going to do absolutely every thing you want. No more staying home because "the parties are the same," or you "just don't like Hillary," or whatever.

Note that the Republicans getting elected are absolutely hosing their white-trash base. But they take the "right" position on abortion so said base eats it up. They don't get into fights about who is going to do the other shit. They just win. And we need to learn from that. Vote. Every. Fucking. Time. And never, ever, ever, for a Republican or a useless third-party candidate.

@30 - just send the hazmat through Bellevue. Problem solved.

@32

it’s easy to say but impossible to enforce.
The east side fire departments don’t have any standing HazMat teams ready to go 24/7 immediately like Seattle. They do the “Avengers assemble…” model. Having a standing team at the ready is too expensive for the smaller departments.
Even the shiny, new SR99 tunnel prohibits HazMat as it would have been too expensive to allow for it even considering all the $$$$ it already cost.