120 Comments

Hopefully 100 million women will vote out every gop everywhere. But who knows, I thought that would've happened last time.

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I guess we'll have to isolate the Handmaidens. There seem to be quite a few in Alabama. A state so backwards they really haven't seemed to become aware of the last 50 years pretty much.

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It's the twin of Mississippi, where prisons are built for future convicted criminals. Both states are third world countries.

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And Tennessee and Louisiana. Louisiana now has an aggressive Ken Paxton/Abbott/MAGA governor who is all hell bent on withholding infrastructure work from New Orleans until they start prosecuting women who have abortions and more. New Orleans might disappoint him. Nobody has ever been able to tame us or bring us under their jackbooted heel. We'll see. He wanted to change our voting so that you couldn't vote for anyone you wanted to and some other ugly stuff. He lost on that one but he is dogged. I dread him. I sure hope he overdoes it but it is Louisiana and New Orleans is a small part of it.

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A small part, but how much of the tourism revenue?

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Virtually all of it and the tourists are back with a vengeance.

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Alabama is a backward place alright, the people there in their wisdom gave us Sessions and tubberville, 2 of the most loathsome people to have been in the senate, this decision by their SC fits nicely with all of the rest.

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Don't forget Roy Moore

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Of course, he was awful in his own unique way, I must have blocked his name, the other two have been more effective in the senate and not in a good way.

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To most of the people who luve in Alabama the Pettis Bridge tragedy was just one or two bad apples in the barrel of cops doing their best to maintain irder.

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Right! Even Trump is well aware of this qnd doesn't speak much about abortion for the same reason/ He knows the whole subject is a vote killer. Nikki Haley says that like abortion the states should decide, but fails to mention as did the Supreme Court that by states it doesn't mean the people in the states but the lawmakers, who apparently decide for themselves what is good for the people whether they like it or not, even though it was the people who voted them into power to represent their interests.

The scientific advancement as described by Lucian that enable so many women to bear children who otherwise would not have been able to is miraculous in itself and is a godsend to humaity. But then you get a bunch of religious ignorant and may I say stupid old men who see something dark and sinister in the whole thing as somehow a sin against God. I read that nature aborts many more embryos tha are carried to term - often very early on when the embryo is the size of not even a pinky nail and many women don't even know it happened. So are they going to prosecute God for abusing the sanctity of life? Destroying creatures made in his own image? At least the state AG says he is not going to prosecute anyone over But what about ie Texas goes this rout? Paxton wouldn't hesitate.

https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/4b56014daa6dda84/a039b1d9-full.pdf

.

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If God supposedly makes humans in her image, she certainly f@cked up when she created the Mango Monster. Big mistake there!

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:) Hey shee-rah, as Joe E. Brown said at the end of Some Like it Hot when he found out his fiance' Jack Lemon, was a man, Nobody's perfect :)

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I happen to be the lucky Grandfather to a pair of marvelous twin boys who would not be here save for the miracle of IVF. They turned 12 years old yesterday, 23 February. If this absolutely stupid, religiously fueled decision by the Alabama Court does drive big nails into Republicans political Coffin, I have no idea what will.

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A great reply, Ed. First the H GOP want to force women to have babies they eith can't safely carry to term or simply can't afford to give them a decent life for various reasons. and then they want to prohibit women from giving birth because the science needed to bring that about also means some cells will have to be discarded in the process. This apparently offends God in their minds. Who appointed them God's spokesperson and assigned them to be monitors of everyone else's life choices?

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Something like 60% of white women voted for Trump twice. I don't have the stats, but I'm willing to bet that a significant majority of them were (1) straight, and (2) married. I'm not straight and not married, but as a white woman I'm still embarrassed as hell by that figure.

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It's not just Republicans. This is a common sense issue that has two distinct sides and it's not just Republicans perpetuating it. There's a lot of people. The Progressive Left has hijacked the Democratic Party to the point that people like me who were liberal are now viewed as Trump-loving right wingers when in fact our needle clearly twitches in the middle. The rattlesnake worshippers on the Far Right are one thing, but as the towers begin to fall all around us, the Progressive Left cannot figure out that a males can't be pregnant, or a trans needs his/her own bathroom, etc etc etc., leaving us all on the edge of a social and economic catastrophe rolling at 500 frames per second. I.E. in slow motion.

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ok comradeski

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Oh boy, last week it was 'Sieg Heil!' There's no balance with you guys. That, and little sense of humor... You did get part of it correct, however, since my online name is marvinski.

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Whew, Lucien. I guess all I can say about any of this is, as I have been saying for decades is :

Men created God in their own image in order to maintain control over women.

It's been like that for quite a while.

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Except, RR…Men do not know what God looks like. They have only assumed for centuries, that, of course, God looks like them. But God could be a woman, a donkey, a centaur, etc.

White men have always portrayed that Jesus was pure and white as the driven snow. We know that he was more than likely very dark-skinned.

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Hey, the Evangelicals are a jump ahead of us on this one. A number of them have already gone to their "leaders" and implored them to dispense with that Jesus guy. He's too liberal. Give us more of the grifter, greedy guy who's always talking about himself like he was us.

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What they've actually done is jump *backward*. Look up Bruce Barton sometime -- Published in the mid-1920s, his "Man Nobody Knows" portrayed Jesus as a businessman and entrepreneur. It was a mammoth bestseller.

Reinventing Jesus and, by extension, Christianity is nothing new. Also worth looking at is the "muscular Christianity" championed by Theodore Roosevelt and many others in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was in part a reaction to the perceived "feminization" of Protestant Christianity -- then as now, women did most of the grassroots work of keeping the churches going, even when they couldn't be members of the clergy.

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I never think of any of what they do as a forward thing. And I'd hoped I wouldn't have to indicate my sarcasm here but that's the way of the written ripped off in a hurry word. I have Methodist and Presbyterian ministers threading all through my family tree, both sides and I think I was really an atheist child. Of course you don't know it when you're little. I believe in Spinoza's version of "religion." And anything a bunch of men sat down to write in the worst eras of trying to control and dominate women calls for immediate dismissal of whatever they say.

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Excuse me Marlene, but I have always thought you knew where I was coming from. Are you trying to tell me something? I'll tell you something. The image of the blond, white Jesus is, in reality, taken from a portrait done by Leonardo DaVinci of his lover. A GAY lover, on the first page of most bibles. As a life long aetheist, and an Original California Girl with the radical Femisist guerilla performance group founded by Judy Chicago, back in the late 60s, I've been around these concepts for quite a while.

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There's a Ray Bradbury story that I love called The Fire Balloons. It's about a priest who goes to Mars to convert the aliens. He shows his fellow priests his Martian crucifix, which is image of an alien on the cross and says, this is our lord Jesus Christ, for the Martians. Because God came to us in human form so we could understand him, he would come to the aliens in their image.

Of course Jesus, a middle eastern Jew of 2000 years ago was probably a brown skinned man, not a white man, but in a theological sense it's irrelevant. Because, if you believe Jesus was God, God could present himself to us in any form God wished - you can't even say "he", since it's illogical to think of the creator having a gender and Jesus could be male or female as God wishes, or in some sense both.

I'm not religious in any traditional sense but entertain these thoughts to annoy the Christians in my family who find it all...annoying.

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On that train of thought, does anyone really believe that he wasn't conceived by sex?

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More to the point, no one really knows if "God" exists as an independent entity, so of course the field is wide open to create one or more in whatever image one chooses. And as long as "God" doesn't strike them down for apostasy or blasphemy or whatever, they're good.

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I do so hope that God reveals herself to these men for the sheer pleasure of watching their heads explode. Am I a bad person?

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Reasonable, actually. I think that is what men eons ago were affraid of.

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Given the effort, not to mention the animal and human sacrifices, that went into pleasing and propitiating the gods, I tend to agree with you. And the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament are full of stories about the wrath of Yahweh/Jehovah when crossed by uppity humans.

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Yep

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The so-called Party of small government and personal freedom makes Big Brother look like Mr Rogers.

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I shouldn't be amazed that we have gotten to his impasse, but I am. This is the 21st century, but looking at red state shenanigans, one could be forgiven for thinking it is the 18th. I'm heartened by the verdicts in tRumps trials so far and continue to hope at least one or two more are settled well before election day. He continues to brag he ended R v W and the voters are listening. I just read AL legislators are writing bills to enshrine protection for IVF into law. They're running scared and know from past specials and off-years their track record of wins is dismal since the SC put it's thumb in the eye of uterus owners in this country. Vote blue, drag your friends to vote blue, register voters, talk to neighbors, get involved - THIS IS NOT A DRESS REHEARSAL! They're telling us what they're going to do. When someone shows you who they are, believe them...

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Alabama is a strange state. There are a couple of pockets of liberalism but way way way too much left over of maybe even a late 1700s mentality of way of behaving. Some of the kindest, smartest, most generous people I know live there and other friends of mine who should be that way are today's shabby excuse. I think the party is in its death throes and a lot of people might tell you that death throes stage is amazingly dangerous and treacherous. It is that rat cornered and is fighting to the death.

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Well said about the thrashing death throes. We have the ability, coming in November to administer yhe mercy stroke and put them out of their largely self inflicted misery.

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Bravo, Lucian! Every woman and man going through the IVF process should kiss you! I have several friends who went through that process. It is not easy and at times, very disappointing because the eggs weren’t viable. There are times that the woman must take certain hormones and drugs to sustain the pregnancy also. Lots and lots of people are pissed and that’s a very good thing for the Dems to take advantage of. Alabama has always been a shitty state to its inhabitants. It just got shittier.

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The Rs are proving themselves now to be bizarrely stupid. The more women protest and they more undermining cases they lose in court, the more they double down and then triple down and honestly, get down to the essence of your white bigotry and racism guys and just go off all by yourselves. Leave women alone for a change.

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If only I believed the,Dems have gumption and smarts to use this as a great big cudgel to beat over Republican Candidates, day in and out, Until November.

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I have been fuming at Nikki Haley’s asinine statement that “Embryos, to me, are babies,”. Until I saw another clip of her saying that she had her son through IVF. So if she had her son through IVF, then according to the Alabama Supreme Court, she murdered her other embryos (babies). I wonder how many other Republican women also had IVF and would also be considered murderers in the eyes of the Alabama Supreme Court? Maybe that will raise their awareness.

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She's been backtracking with that all day today. She never really gets her messaging right on this, speaking to the Conservative Christian side all white men and then trying to turn quickly and talk to "just us girls." The only thing I like about Nikki is she's taking lots of blows against Trump and there's some evidence they're making a dent. He certainly seems frazzled and frayed more with each passing day. Apparently a good number of Republican donors feel that way too because she also raised more than Trump did last month with her newfound friends. Let her keep landing her blows with them. She's not going to be president this time.

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There has never been a day that I agreed with anything she has said. The few times she has done the right thing, it was like pulling teeth to get her to do it. But...I do like that she is finally calling Trump out for what he is. I know she's hoping he either dies or is in prison before the election and she'll be the nominee.

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Nope. Not a word out of her mouth. She's a Republican. That's really all anyone needs to know or say about her and she's proven over and over for a long time she has an overabundance of her own sycophant qualities toward him. All that she's said about him and his abilities and disabilities and she tops it off with she'll support him if he's elected. That negates everything else and confirms she is not to be taken seriously. But I want her to make him keep spending the money he's getting kind of desperate about having to pay so much out and more to go and more legal fees. I understand his legal tab for January was $3 million.

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Nor any other time, unless the country wants to get rid of SS, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act so that the richest among us can get a bigger tax cut.

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Hopefully, she will never be Presidrnt, not in the lifetime of the Republic.

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I have a friend who is an attorney, and he said tonight that “extrauterine child” was ludicrous as a term of legal art, but would make a good title for a Funkadelic album.

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Maggot Brain is a classic. But the maga brains across the country, not at all. All maggots all the time.

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Agreed. But Maggot Brain has real life, life in the strongest sense, on its side, and so do we.

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Sounds more like a horror movie.

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Insanity marches on.

Off with their Dicks.

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We've let this happen every time we've let someone mix religion with politics.

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This whole episode highlights what bloody hypocrites the Republicans are-by saying, 'oh these embryos are kids, but we can't feed the kids we have for summer school because they're not embryos"

Any woman with a brain, uterus and other reproductive organs (old or young) should make sure she votes this year to make sure the GOP and their Christo-fascist handlers do not gain any more ground than they have already. Vote them out, every single one.

You can write off the entire South right now for women's rights. There is no such thing.

Elections have consequences, and the GOP is about to run into them hard.

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PLEASE let this fundamentalist fanatic madness utterly destroy the GOP in the coming election(s)!!!!!!!

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This is so insane that I don't want to think about it. Fortunately there are mentally stronger people than I who are willing to engage these lunatics.

In that ruling, which I don't want to read, was there any mention of mandatory embalming? Funeral Homes? Tiny caskets?

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To carry this out further, it seems to me that when a woman menstruates, an egg is rejected-or killed. So most of the women in Alabama are murdering a child once a month. Going to be a busy time for the police in Alabama. No wonder they elected Tommy Tuberville.

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And shouldn’t men masturbating be illegal??? Just think of all those potential babies going to waste!!

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As a recovering catholic for nearly 40 years it was and still is considered a grave moral sin. On the other hand (no pun intended), we get the Monty Python song Every sperm is sacred!!

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Oh Cathy, you clever girl!😁

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Mike Johnson is on the case!

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Heh! That was a joke made in "Legally Blonde", too, wasn't it? A joke then, law tomorrow....

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Was there an MD leaning over your shoulder as you wrote?! I liked the eugenics part, though, with all the needles and selection standards.

When I first read about this latest overreach of the Christian Nationalists, all I could think was: these "children" are living in a freezer, but thank heaven they can get lawyers! The Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court (of course) is a religious fanatic and a part of the group wanting to construe the Constitution as mistaken in re that Church and State thing. You wait. This crowd is so over the edge about sex and reproduction that it can't be long before there are guidelines about when you get laid, and how. And maybe even IF!

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Something is seriously wrong with these dudes. Shades of puritanical witch burners. I thought they were all dead. Apparently not.

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This doesn’t even begin to touch on what women actually go through, either. Harvesting those little eggs for instance is damn painful!

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I liked the way Republicans figured out that, after overturning Roe, which was hurting them (and may kill them) they couldn't support yet another infringement, and backtracked on IVF, with Trump leading the pack. Blech.

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Opportunistic, greedy, and power hungry. Another blech.

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I really want them to go all the way, as it were, with this. For sex to be legal, a married couple must begin with a prayer, thanking Jesus for the opportunity to create a child, and then they affirm the Lord with 7-to-10 minutes of missionary sex, and then they both say, "Thank you, Jesus" and go to sleep. I'd like many states to enact this "Married Sex" law before the election, so Biden can roar to a landslide victory. And then the law can be repealed.

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I believe you overestimated the minutes Jesse. I'm thinking 60 to 90 seconds, and then you have to consider all the premature ejaculators.

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🤣😂 Jesse, I guess that’s a whole new meaning of “going all the way”!

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