So apparently Trump made a tweet saying he could kick Biden's ass.

Honestly I almost just want to give up and just let nature take its course. I don't think life is real.

And? What does this have to do with suppressing basic rights?


No it's not. Women having full control over their bodies is absolutely a basic right.

Everyone should have full control of their bodies. However that's not what the argument has ever been about as it's whether or not the fetus is considered human or if it has rights and stuff.

How many people have legit said that women can't have abortions because women should have no control of their bodies, rather than the fetus needing the body itself?

The fetus doesn't get to have a say on whether it exists or not, because a fertilized egg/a clump of cells isn't a person. The actual human being with rights is the one carrying it. Just like a person can decide to have a pregnancy, they should be able to decide whether they wish to terminate it. Applying a "no backsies" rule to human reproduction is myopic at best, and actively dangerous at worst.

I am also afraid that the argument is about bodily autonomy at the end of it all, because telling someone that they can't do x with their own bodies denies them said fullness of autonomy, thus infringing on a basic human right. How the fetus got there isn't relevant; whether the woman wished to become pregnant and then came to regret it, contraception malfunctioned or sexual assault was involved does not matter. A person's body is their most absolute and indisputable possession, and if they wish to take something out of it, whether the thing in question is alive or not, is a moot point.

I support abortion but I think the fact so many people feel queasy about non-medical 3rd trimester abortions should make it obvious that it's clearly more complicated than simply one person's control over their own body. If that was all that abortion debates encompassed you'd see similarly heated rhetoric about, say, appendectomies. Nobody weighs the moral, social, economic, or religious implications of appendectomies.




He was an ANUSite for years, so "crypto" is perhaps a bit generous.

Sorry to interrupt what appears to be a really fun conversation on abortion, but here's the latest in Trumptopia (it's like a dystopia, but embarrassing)--

Trump's lead lawyer calls it quits as Trump gets aggressive like the guilty asshole he is. Indeed, it wasn't just a member of his team of lawyers, it was the head lawyer.




But wait, there's more, because there always fucking is ha ha ha!


HR McMaster is resigning as National Security Advisor.



In case you're keeping track (lots of places are, with The Daily Show keeping a "Celebrity Appresident" scorecard), the Trump administration has higher turnover at 13.5 months than the previous 4 administrations had in their first two years. We're barely into the second year of this fucking disaster so far. With any luck, this next year will see Trump and Pence also dragged out of it.

This is nonsense. No one calls governments fascist for outlawing drugs or prostitution. Furthermore, taken to an extreme, this would mean that we could have nearly no laws without violating basic rights, since nearly every law bans you taking an action -- that is, doing a thing with your body.

Uh... nobody argues that no laws should exist, but when laws are passed to criminalize actions which have no negative effect on others -- that is the textbook definition of authoritarianism.

Edit: My 666th post... that's rather fitting.

So every nation that outlaws drugs or prostitution is fascist? Do you guys realize you're making the word lose all meaning by tossing it around like that?

Not fascist, but authoritarian. How is it not? What gives any government the right to prevent people from doing things that don't harm others?

Having control over our own body is not the same thing as trying to gain control to another body.

There's a difference in approach between a fascist regime and a modern democracy when it come to deeling with drugs and prostitution. In some democracies, they will try to legalise or at least decriminalise the use of some type of drugs. In a fascist regime, the punition will be more radical and can lead to being executed for drug consumtion.

Get him out of here

Oh my god, is Cynical a Trump supporter now? Is Falco too? This is rich.

That's exactly right, and Trump is pushing to execute drug dealers and women who have abortions

That's just a deflection. Republicans love to pretend they care about the fetuses, but we know they don't. They don't care about maternity leave, prenatal care, women's healthcare, or hell anything that helps children once they're born. They oppose Planned Parenthood even though the majority of the care offered by PP aren't even abortion-related.


Just because they don't say it outright doesn't mean that's not what this is about. Ever heard of dog-whistling?

In any case, forcing a woman to keep a pregnancy or worse, to give birth, is inherently immoral and misogynistic as fuck.

If you read the post that I originally quoted, he said "fascist". Of course it's authoritarian, every government ever is authoritarian by definition.

That was me. I said fascism, then I corrected myself. And not every government is authoritarian, just the vast majority of them are.

Why is it surprising ANUSholes are Trumples? Aren't they one of his core demographics?

For a long time they positioned themselves as another one of those "third way" groups. Neither left nor right, neither conservative nor liberal, a different kind of reactionary, etc. Like other such groups they have ended up folding back into the mainstream and became just more regular conservatives. I believe they eventually realized that their ostensibly very different kind of politics was not all that different from the republican party platform, at least not in any way where they couldn't be happily melded.

Yesterday, I went to that site. It has been a long time since the last time I went there. It definitely took a turn for the worst, if that was still possible. With a extreme right racist christian nutter who thinks he a modern Templar writing discusting articles, mingling vile religious nonsense, facist politic and music. Even some of the anciens writers and longtime comment posters who are mainly on the far right (more in line with Varg V.) say he's a fucking lunatic.

I highly encourage everyone to read this article. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story ... red-217699

Choice excerpts:

You mean, to make an overgrown buffoon of a spoiled brat listen, all you need to do is act like a fucking adult?

So, that episode of 60 minutes with Stormy Daniels is going on air tonight. Her lawyers are saying that they got proof of this, and other information that can lead to something shitty happening to the president. What are your thoughts on this? Personally I'm not so sure, with all these fuckups this idiot have made with no repercussionss taken into account. But they are really setting up something though, I'll give them that, by not releasing any promos etc beforehand.I guess all we can do is wait and see? And possibly cross our fingers along the way? Maybe this isn't just hype?

His base is going to want to high-five him, not impeach him. Unless she fucks him with a strap-on, because that would be gay.

In less titillating but still meaningful news, the new spending bill may be a bit of a boon for Democratic Senators whose seats are vulnerable this year. Manchin of West Virginia, Tester of Montana, Heitkamp of North Dakota, and Donnelly of Indiana are all touting various parts of the bill that are important to their constituents as personal victories-- for example, Tester's using the bill's natural disaster funds to shore up support in a state that was decimated by wildfires in 2017, and Heitkamp is milking publicity out of provisions she wrote that will benefit North Dakotans in particular. These four are facing tough races-- Heitkamp and Donnelly especially-- and as it stands it's still looking like the Democrats can at best hope to hold steady in the Senate and should probably brace to lose one or two seats there, even though as a whole the year is looking like a pretty bad one for Trump and the Republicans. Hopefully the bill helps the four most vulnerable Democrats in the Senate hold onto their seats to avoid widening the Republican advantage there.

[Failsafeman wrote:
His base is going to want to high-five him, not impeach him. Unless she fucks him with a strap-on, because that would be gay.

You're probably spot on. let's hope it's strap on, than! Or that he was all dressed up in woman clothes or something! That'd be hilarious! But, it's probably more boring than we think and probably not as dramatic as the lawyers want us to believe.

Of course nothing will come of this. Ms. Daniels was an adult when the affair took place, and she is not claiming anything that happened was non-consensual. So I don't see how it could hurt Trump. History has shown that being a gross old lecher is not a disqualification for being president, right Bill Clinton?

The problem is that trying to appeal to moral outrage won't do shit because the moral crusaders of the country have already shown that they're willing to overlook anything unethical he does either personally or professionally, and the people on the left are mostly outraged by the hypocrisy because they feel like the right would crucify anybody on the left who did the same thing. The only real issue from this whole thing is whether or not the money used to buy her silence came from his campaign funds or not, and even if they were it wouldn't end up hurting him anyway because refer to my first sentence.

Considering how much the right loves throwing around "cuck" these days, someone ought to meme that into "Trump is cucked by Mattis."

^truth



Somebody ask Tony Perkins if "postpartum infidelity with two pornstars in one weekend" is a clause covered by the Gospel of Mulligangelicalism.

Actually, don't, we already know the answer.

They'll just say "we knew he was a lout when we voted for him, but he's going to push the right agenda." Because that's what they said when the whole pussy-grabbing thing happened.

It turns out that you guys, and my assumptions were right! This was literally nothing! Some vague death threat from an unknown man isn't shit. All hype, as expected.

The issue here though is Trump both denying it and the 100K payout to silence her.

I saw an excerpt from an article hilariously saying that she was accomplishing what Mueller hasn't yet--essentially dragging Trump down. It's that Trump is clearly trying to hide something that could harm him. I know, it's a long shot, Trump really is the new Teflon Don.

One good thing coming out of this is that the Evangelicals are having their shiny "moral majority" veneer handily washed away. They are neither moral, nor the majority. I'm happy to see so many people finally pissed at them. Not only will it finally, hopefully, inspire people to tear away from the religious right, but away from religion in general. Not to forget that each new tragedy further erodes the mentality of "thoughts and prayers," which was long considered a slur by the irreligious, but is now considered a grossly cruel and useless statement by the bulk of the country.

"Thoughts and prayers" and Trump are quickly eroding the religious right's power in this country. While they are stupidly slow in denouncing Trump, in time, it may not matter much anyway. Evangelicals are increasingly seen as both obsolete, insulting, hypocritical, and cruel.

If it can be proven at all that the threat came from somebody on Shitbag's behalf then it can only add to charges against him.

I'm doubtful that is true. As this neat iPolitics article puts it, the "religious right" don't see anything inherently incompatible about supporting politicians like Trump, since politicians like him enable their interests. And, history has had many examples of morally-flawed secular leaders that have been praised by people of faith solely on the fact that such leaders helped enable and spread the faith. In this way, the Evangelicals are able to have their "moral majority" cake and eat it too.

Weirdly, it turns out that religious fundamentalists are good at twisting logic into knots to justify themselves.

Yeah, it's almost like they have some experience re-interpreting things and manipulating people!

Pulling people away from the movement may not be super fast, but it will keep people on the outside from joining. Yes, evangelicals don't see anything wrong with how they do things, but everyone else does, and that will, hopefully, make it that much harder for people to willingly join that. On the other hand, while people are frequently good at justifying clinging to broken beliefs and views, not everyone can do that forever.

I might be biased in my view, also. From where I stand, I don't have pretty much anyone in my life defending the way evangelicals behave and justify bullshit. On a societal level, everyone around me is fully disgusted with the way evangelicals operate.

Another problem there: anything Daniels does to prove her story, starts her at a legal disadvantage. She signed* an agreement to keep quiet. She is currently in breech of that contract, which means Trump is within his rights to sue the woman into absolute ruin. Is she willing to take that hit, when its recoil against Trump is not as certain? (BastardHead brought up the interesting chance that the payoff to Daniels came - illegally! - from the campaign finances; but this is a guy who pumped $66M of his own funds into the campaign, so it seems doubtful to me that he'd not just dip into his own pocket again for a piddly 100K).

*I think it's safe to assume there is an actual signed document, since this is not the type of behaviour - from either side - that lends itself well to taking each other at their word.