Silver Adept (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
silveradept) wrote2018-08-23 10:16 pm
silveradept) wrote2018-08-23 10:16 pm
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Sometimes, there is progress, despite their best efforts. (Politics of June-August 02018)
This post can be excluded. Remove "political links" as a tag and you will not see these again.
Before we start,jadelennox has a reslly useful primer on how to link to things that are terrible without rewarding the people posting the terrible things.
To start, the lens of politics is narrowed to the point where all politics seems firmly rooted in identity, but ideas that look to build on more universal themes are still there. The sorts of things that take as core that all people should have an equitable share, regardless of their identity.
Like, say, that all people who can get pregnant have the right to choose whether to carry that pregnancy to term. The retirement of Anthony Kennedy from the supreme Court threatens the legal precedent that makes abortion, and possible even marriage equality, legal. Because the nominated person is unlikely to be friendly to anybody other than whte male evangelicals. Depending on which place you live in, there may be laws designed specifically to go into effect immediately should the Supreme Court reverse on that pathway.
Suggestions on how your emergency contraceptive will work, and best bets for having a low chance of unintended pregnancies, Although for a nonzero part of the population, the IUD is not the best option, unlike what the article concludes. Consultation with a trained medical professional, if you can get access to one, is the best way of finding what works best. If you are thinking of stsockpiling in case of terrible things, a snapshot of pricing for Plan B and for AfterPill, both of which are potential options with reasonable shelf lives.
If you are looking for ways to help with your time, dollars, or bodily presence, the Midwest Access Coalition, TEA fund, or other local organization to you probably has a network designed to provide access where you are, to help with travel, lodging, and other costs associated when you do not have a local clinic to you. Or you could be an escort, if you are vetted appropriately, to shield persons from protesters and vituperance while they exercise their rights to autonomy. Or even, perhaps, learn from those who are learning how to do the work themselves, and at home, for those who cannot afford to do it in a clinic, so that even if it becomes officially illegal, it can still be done safely.
Because most of the men you'll meet that are or were in high positions of power in the Republican party don't want you to have an abortion, but they will insist upon it for their mistresses.
Part of the reality we live in is that we have to engage with a world that is fundamentally opposite what we think of as normal and sane, and we have to remember what it was like before everything went kerflooey so that we can rebuild it when we're done with the terrible. Or at least less terrible than we were before. It requires engaging with the here and now instead of placing your hope in someone else, somewhere else, somewhen else. It also requires speaking up and acting, rather than being the silent majority that terrible people will point to as the reason why they don't need to do anything about that. Work to change the things you don't like into the things you do. Because there's a lot of people who are trying very hard to disconnect from everyone else so they can do terrible things to everyone else. Sometimes they do these things in defiance of their own family's history, and the knowledge that had their policies been in place, their own families wouldn't have made it.
Things like organizations dedicated to making sure everyone can exercise their franchise, or providing assistance to those being detained, presumed to be criminals, and separated from their families. Or supporting and being part of the support network that is the underlying infrastructure for the people who end up fighting the terrible people, not that there would be any sort of media coverage for them, becase they're not sexy, even if they are vital.
Sometimes singing the right song at the right time is the thing to do. Sometimes it's delaying a bus with your bodies.
There are, apparently, some limitations to the amount of corruption and incompetence a person can have in the current administration, as Scott Pruit was finally ousted from the Environmental Protection Agency. That said, we still need to make sure his successor doesn't roll back protections that have been keeping air and water much cleaner than they used to be. If you are looking for allies on that front, try your local high schools - teenagers are speaking out on climate change with as much authority and poise as any adult, and receiving the same "you know nothing" as the teenagers speaking out against school violence and easy access to guns.
The Transportation Security Administration has been assigning federal air marshals to surveil people that they believe might be exhibiting the signs of terrorism, even if they are not actually under investigation or connected to any terrorist. Which can be something as simple as boarding last, sleeping on the plane, or using an airport bathroom to change or shave. And it's not foreign nationals being surveiled, but citizens.
Banks that you can take your business from, if you have the option, because of their decisions to fund an oil pipeline crossing Native territory.
When making decisions about who you might want to see in power by exercising your franchise, remember that the current administration saw no problem with separating families and mass-incarcerating children and changing their justification for it to whatever thaey think we'll buy. When confronted with the reality of human suffering, https://www.propublica.org/article/children-separated-from-parents-border-patrol-cbp-trump-immigration-policy">some of the agents made jokes about it rather than try to stop it. The conditions involved were inhumane and unsuitable for children or adults. We got to see inside. People's dietary restrictions were not being honored.
One party has at least made condemnations of this policy and tried to stop it, including taking tours of the facilities to see the horrors for themselves. Several state attorneys general have filed suit, alleging the denial of due process in the separation. The base seems to have been quite happy with it, though, and the official propaganda arm was busy at work downplaying all of it.
Remember as well, that reunification is not the norm for those families. Many of them were given the option to be reunified with their children if they agreed to be deported. (Courts agreed they could do this, even if they stressed they should only do it sparsely.) Many of those that took the waiving said they were unaware that was what they were doing.
Even when ordered to reunify, they essentially refused to do so. And got asked to provide their plans and documnts when it was getting clearer they didn't have them. IT would have been lovely to have had well-defined consequences for that, but that's not really what was going to happen.
There wasn't a plan on how to reunify families when there was at least a nominal reversal, and active attempts at dissauding the people who wanted to talk from doing so.
Even after all of that, local offices of ICE resumed the process of arresting people who come for other government appointments.
It's not cutting down on the number of sdylum requests, so if they were hoping to stem those requests, that's not going to do it. (Some are thinking harder about how they want to attempt the crossing.) Instead, they seem to think children can stand for their own deportation hearings. Or that asylum seekers should bit be able to post bond.
And think of all the return on investment private prison groups are getting for all of this.
There is some good news, however. Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to charges of tax evasion and illegal campaign contributions, with a statement that directly implicated, even if it did not name, the current administrator, as a participant in the illegal campaign contributions. Additionally, Mr. Manafort was convicted on eight counts of tax and bank fraud. with the government given the option to retry the other ten counts, as the jury was unable to reach a verdict on them. Mr. Manafort now looks forward to his second trial, as the current administrator rains as much prejudice as he can into the proceedings and the opinions of the people who could be jurors of that trial. And an indictment came down on campaign finance for the first Congresscritter to endorse the current administrator. So the investigatory arm commissioned on making sure the election was not improperly tampered with is still working and returning results and convictions on charges, and has shown the first direct entry that crimes may have been committed by the administrator trying to influence the election improperly. Although not on the matter of foreign interference. That chapter is yet to come.
Before we start,
jadelennox has a reslly useful primer on how to link to things that are terrible without rewarding the people posting the terrible things.To start, the lens of politics is narrowed to the point where all politics seems firmly rooted in identity, but ideas that look to build on more universal themes are still there. The sorts of things that take as core that all people should have an equitable share, regardless of their identity.
Like, say, that all people who can get pregnant have the right to choose whether to carry that pregnancy to term. The retirement of Anthony Kennedy from the supreme Court threatens the legal precedent that makes abortion, and possible even marriage equality, legal. Because the nominated person is unlikely to be friendly to anybody other than whte male evangelicals. Depending on which place you live in, there may be laws designed specifically to go into effect immediately should the Supreme Court reverse on that pathway.
Suggestions on how your emergency contraceptive will work, and best bets for having a low chance of unintended pregnancies, Although for a nonzero part of the population, the IUD is not the best option, unlike what the article concludes. Consultation with a trained medical professional, if you can get access to one, is the best way of finding what works best. If you are thinking of stsockpiling in case of terrible things, a snapshot of pricing for Plan B and for AfterPill, both of which are potential options with reasonable shelf lives.
If you are looking for ways to help with your time, dollars, or bodily presence, the Midwest Access Coalition, TEA fund, or other local organization to you probably has a network designed to provide access where you are, to help with travel, lodging, and other costs associated when you do not have a local clinic to you. Or you could be an escort, if you are vetted appropriately, to shield persons from protesters and vituperance while they exercise their rights to autonomy. Or even, perhaps, learn from those who are learning how to do the work themselves, and at home, for those who cannot afford to do it in a clinic, so that even if it becomes officially illegal, it can still be done safely.
Because most of the men you'll meet that are or were in high positions of power in the Republican party don't want you to have an abortion, but they will insist upon it for their mistresses.
Part of the reality we live in is that we have to engage with a world that is fundamentally opposite what we think of as normal and sane, and we have to remember what it was like before everything went kerflooey so that we can rebuild it when we're done with the terrible. Or at least less terrible than we were before. It requires engaging with the here and now instead of placing your hope in someone else, somewhere else, somewhen else. It also requires speaking up and acting, rather than being the silent majority that terrible people will point to as the reason why they don't need to do anything about that. Work to change the things you don't like into the things you do. Because there's a lot of people who are trying very hard to disconnect from everyone else so they can do terrible things to everyone else. Sometimes they do these things in defiance of their own family's history, and the knowledge that had their policies been in place, their own families wouldn't have made it.
Things like organizations dedicated to making sure everyone can exercise their franchise, or providing assistance to those being detained, presumed to be criminals, and separated from their families. Or supporting and being part of the support network that is the underlying infrastructure for the people who end up fighting the terrible people, not that there would be any sort of media coverage for them, becase they're not sexy, even if they are vital.
Sometimes singing the right song at the right time is the thing to do. Sometimes it's delaying a bus with your bodies.
There are, apparently, some limitations to the amount of corruption and incompetence a person can have in the current administration, as Scott Pruit was finally ousted from the Environmental Protection Agency. That said, we still need to make sure his successor doesn't roll back protections that have been keeping air and water much cleaner than they used to be. If you are looking for allies on that front, try your local high schools - teenagers are speaking out on climate change with as much authority and poise as any adult, and receiving the same "you know nothing" as the teenagers speaking out against school violence and easy access to guns.
The Transportation Security Administration has been assigning federal air marshals to surveil people that they believe might be exhibiting the signs of terrorism, even if they are not actually under investigation or connected to any terrorist. Which can be something as simple as boarding last, sleeping on the plane, or using an airport bathroom to change or shave. And it's not foreign nationals being surveiled, but citizens.
Banks that you can take your business from, if you have the option, because of their decisions to fund an oil pipeline crossing Native territory.
When making decisions about who you might want to see in power by exercising your franchise, remember that the current administration saw no problem with separating families and mass-incarcerating children and changing their justification for it to whatever thaey think we'll buy. When confronted with the reality of human suffering, https://www.propublica.org/article/children-separated-from-parents-border-patrol-cbp-trump-immigration-policy">some of the agents made jokes about it rather than try to stop it. The conditions involved were inhumane and unsuitable for children or adults. We got to see inside. People's dietary restrictions were not being honored.
One party has at least made condemnations of this policy and tried to stop it, including taking tours of the facilities to see the horrors for themselves. Several state attorneys general have filed suit, alleging the denial of due process in the separation. The base seems to have been quite happy with it, though, and the official propaganda arm was busy at work downplaying all of it.
Remember as well, that reunification is not the norm for those families. Many of them were given the option to be reunified with their children if they agreed to be deported. (Courts agreed they could do this, even if they stressed they should only do it sparsely.) Many of those that took the waiving said they were unaware that was what they were doing.
Even when ordered to reunify, they essentially refused to do so. And got asked to provide their plans and documnts when it was getting clearer they didn't have them. IT would have been lovely to have had well-defined consequences for that, but that's not really what was going to happen.
There wasn't a plan on how to reunify families when there was at least a nominal reversal, and active attempts at dissauding the people who wanted to talk from doing so.
Even after all of that, local offices of ICE resumed the process of arresting people who come for other government appointments.
It's not cutting down on the number of sdylum requests, so if they were hoping to stem those requests, that's not going to do it. (Some are thinking harder about how they want to attempt the crossing.) Instead, they seem to think children can stand for their own deportation hearings. Or that asylum seekers should bit be able to post bond.
And think of all the return on investment private prison groups are getting for all of this.
There is some good news, however. Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to charges of tax evasion and illegal campaign contributions, with a statement that directly implicated, even if it did not name, the current administrator, as a participant in the illegal campaign contributions. Additionally, Mr. Manafort was convicted on eight counts of tax and bank fraud. with the government given the option to retry the other ten counts, as the jury was unable to reach a verdict on them. Mr. Manafort now looks forward to his second trial, as the current administrator rains as much prejudice as he can into the proceedings and the opinions of the people who could be jurors of that trial. And an indictment came down on campaign finance for the first Congresscritter to endorse the current administrator. So the investigatory arm commissioned on making sure the election was not improperly tampered with is still working and returning results and convictions on charges, and has shown the first direct entry that crimes may have been committed by the administrator trying to influence the election improperly. Although not on the matter of foreign interference. That chapter is yet to come.