"For conservatives this also included the question, 'Should trans medical care be covered under the same rules as care for other human beings?'”
The problem: the GOP has whipped up the base to see trans people not as "other human beings" but as not human at all. They have so otherized trans folk with labels like "pedophiles" and "groomers" that a permission structure is firmly in place to not see them as fellow humans/Americans but as monsters out of some dimly recalled myth.
These laws serve both to get Republicans elected and to further implant these myths in the public unconsciousness. However complicated trans medical care might be on an individual basis, our task must be to keep the human beings who need and want it front of mind.
Joe Magass and the Republicans are carrying like guys with a hundred grand of “Let’s Go Brandon” merch they cashed in their 401k’s to buy and that they had intended to sell to the Trumprubes at Trump campaign stops through the end of the year.
Hey legislators everywhere! This taxpayer would rather my money be used to give health care to everybody than be used to pay your fucking salaries. So stick that where the sun don't shine.
"Special rights" have been used against: women's rights, environmental rights (clean air and water), gay rights, disabled rights, voting and other civil rights for non-white people..... So what isn't "special rights"? Anything that benefits: corporations, the wealthy, the police- basically a MINORITY of the population.
No special rights? Like the special right of a fetus to use someone else's body against their will, a "right" that not only no born person gets but the fetus loses the second they exit the birth canal? Republicans and Manchin can stfu about "special rights" as long as they support that bullshit.
If the people working on AI really want to be useful, they should design an Android that can’t think or feel, but is programmed to react to stimulus as if it were being inflicted with pain and suffering. Then, every republican could have their very own thing they can be cruel to and leave everybody else alone.
Fuck all this AI with superhuman intelligence nonsense. Much more useful from a practical perspective would be the stupid Ai, one capable of learning and logic, but steadfast against using it.
"Certainly, I’d be hopeful that they would go through [if Trump wins] – that we would stop taxpayers’ dollars being used for things that taxpayers in Montana don’t support.”
How quaint. I was told lots of times that people don't get to decide how tax dollars are spent when I was protesting military adventurism or handouts to extraction industries.
the podcast Maintenance Phase does a breathtaking job of eviscerating the Cass Report. As does Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz: Health Nerd. It is an ugly piece of transphobia masquerading as a health report.
Of course, this is health care. Providing prosthetics isn’t special rights for amputees, nor chemo special rights for cancer patients. Each person has a general right to care for whichever conditions are affecting that specific person’s health.
*** *** ***
There is another way to talk about this.
What if somebody said: "There should be no special rights,”
and we responded with: "What about people who have special needs?"
When we think clearly, we discover that only a few needs (shelter, food, water, air) are universal. Most needs are special. And do you know what? There is nothing wrong with being special.
I am OLD ENOUGH to remember that Mister Rogers always explained to his young viewers that they were important and worthy of love and respect because they were SPECIAL. Amazingly, he did not intend the word "special" to be an insult.
Of course, people being the rotten jerks they are, the word "special" has come to be an insult. I think it started in elementary school. Some children with "special needs" were placed in "special" classes. In response, a lot of "normal" children with "normal" needs, being rotten jerks, joked that the "special" children were all dumb.
Most children grew out of this petty cruelty. Others simply became Republicans.
If I had magical powers, I would restore to the word "special" all the positive connotations that it once had long ago. And I would argue that being "special" is not only the best thing about being human; it's really the only thing that matters about us. What matters about every human being is that they are unique. This is the foundation of what we call human equality and democracy.
If you don't value what is special about you, then how do you build your self-esteem? I'll tell you how, because I've seen Republicans do it. You compare yourself to others, and you consider yourself to be superior to most people and inferior to a few people. You take a comfortable place somewhere high up in the pecking order. And you do everything you can to crush the people you regard as beneath you and to kiss up to the people you regard as above you. And of course, this is the foundation of what we call an authoritarian mindset, which has been with us since the Middle Ages and today dreams of fascism.
I was lucky to spend my childhood in the Seventies. I was born in 1967, so I feel like Mister Rogers's Neighborhood and Sesame Street were created just for me.
This is also true. Basically, Republicans don't like the idea of any rights at all. You should never receive anything for free. You should receive only what you earn, no more and no less. It makes me wonder how Republicans imagine they survived their own early childhood.
So of course, it bothers Republicans that there are still a few things left that are free for everybody, like air and sunshine. This is why they hate nature. As much as it is technologically possible, they strive to buy up and then break up the global commons into tiny pieces, so that they can sell them off to the rest of us at a steeply marked-up price.
Right-wingery at its most basic: a bigot has an absolute right to discriminate against others and ruin their lives out of sheer spite, and anyone who disagrees with that bigot is violating their sacred constitutional right to be mean-spirited in ways that bring actual harm to other people.
Project 2025 says that absolutely NO taxpayer dollars should be spent on trans care, punishable by a termination of funds. Which is going to have every hospital collecting Medicare/Medicaid/Tricare (i.e. all of them) dropping the services. Plus kids would be forbidden to transition even socially at school.
"For conservatives this also included the question, 'Should trans medical care be covered under the same rules as care for other human beings?'”
The problem: the GOP has whipped up the base to see trans people not as "other human beings" but as not human at all. They have so otherized trans folk with labels like "pedophiles" and "groomers" that a permission structure is firmly in place to not see them as fellow humans/Americans but as monsters out of some dimly recalled myth.
These laws serve both to get Republicans elected and to further implant these myths in the public unconsciousness. However complicated trans medical care might be on an individual basis, our task must be to keep the human beings who need and want it front of mind.
Joe Magass and the Republicans are carrying like guys with a hundred grand of “Let’s Go Brandon” merch they cashed in their 401k’s to buy and that they had intended to sell to the Trumprubes at Trump campaign stops through the end of the year.
Hey legislators everywhere! This taxpayer would rather my money be used to give health care to everybody than be used to pay your fucking salaries. So stick that where the sun don't shine.
Ta, Crip Dyke. I'm ready for this fight. Trans rights are human rights, and health care is health care.
Death taxes, CRT, woke, "special rights:" All nice, compact, verbal triggers ... why do rethugs like triggers, one wonders.
Gives 'em stuff to be mad about.
Andy Harris has long been a dick. But, somehow, Eastern Shore Marylanders love him
"Special rights" have been used against: women's rights, environmental rights (clean air and water), gay rights, disabled rights, voting and other civil rights for non-white people..... So what isn't "special rights"? Anything that benefits: corporations, the wealthy, the police- basically a MINORITY of the population.
No special rights? Like the special right of a fetus to use someone else's body against their will, a "right" that not only no born person gets but the fetus loses the second they exit the birth canal? Republicans and Manchin can stfu about "special rights" as long as they support that bullshit.
If the people working on AI really want to be useful, they should design an Android that can’t think or feel, but is programmed to react to stimulus as if it were being inflicted with pain and suffering. Then, every republican could have their very own thing they can be cruel to and leave everybody else alone.
Fuck all this AI with superhuman intelligence nonsense. Much more useful from a practical perspective would be the stupid Ai, one capable of learning and logic, but steadfast against using it.
"Certainly, I’d be hopeful that they would go through [if Trump wins] – that we would stop taxpayers’ dollars being used for things that taxpayers in Montana don’t support.”
How quaint. I was told lots of times that people don't get to decide how tax dollars are spent when I was protesting military adventurism or handouts to extraction industries.
I can remember when special rights was used to describe laws attempting to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Frank Luntz: Turn language upside down, the repeat ad nauseum
Luntz just stole his whole schtick from 1984, didn't he?
His two minute war face sucks. Work on it.
The Oregon Citizen's Alliance and Measure 9.
The OCA's sister group in Colorado and Amendment 1.
the podcast Maintenance Phase does a breathtaking job of eviscerating the Cass Report. As does Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz: Health Nerd. It is an ugly piece of transphobia masquerading as a health report.
And every rightwinger is now citing it as the gold standard.
That was it's intent all along
I always thought that's how the Tories perceived it.
What I wasn't sure about at first was whether Cass was a useful idiot or a witting co-conspirator. I've since been convinced of the latter.
Since her name is on it, I imagine she is a co-conspirator.
"Because there should be no special rights.”
Of course, this is health care. Providing prosthetics isn’t special rights for amputees, nor chemo special rights for cancer patients. Each person has a general right to care for whichever conditions are affecting that specific person’s health.
*** *** ***
There is another way to talk about this.
What if somebody said: "There should be no special rights,”
and we responded with: "What about people who have special needs?"
When we think clearly, we discover that only a few needs (shelter, food, water, air) are universal. Most needs are special. And do you know what? There is nothing wrong with being special.
I am OLD ENOUGH to remember that Mister Rogers always explained to his young viewers that they were important and worthy of love and respect because they were SPECIAL. Amazingly, he did not intend the word "special" to be an insult.
Of course, people being the rotten jerks they are, the word "special" has come to be an insult. I think it started in elementary school. Some children with "special needs" were placed in "special" classes. In response, a lot of "normal" children with "normal" needs, being rotten jerks, joked that the "special" children were all dumb.
Most children grew out of this petty cruelty. Others simply became Republicans.
If I had magical powers, I would restore to the word "special" all the positive connotations that it once had long ago. And I would argue that being "special" is not only the best thing about being human; it's really the only thing that matters about us. What matters about every human being is that they are unique. This is the foundation of what we call human equality and democracy.
If you don't value what is special about you, then how do you build your self-esteem? I'll tell you how, because I've seen Republicans do it. You compare yourself to others, and you consider yourself to be superior to most people and inferior to a few people. You take a comfortable place somewhere high up in the pecking order. And you do everything you can to crush the people you regard as beneath you and to kiss up to the people you regard as above you. And of course, this is the foundation of what we call an authoritarian mindset, which has been with us since the Middle Ages and today dreams of fascism.
There were quite a few "you're unique and that's okay" shows for kids back in the 70s.
I was lucky to spend my childhood in the Seventies. I was born in 1967, so I feel like Mister Rogers's Neighborhood and Sesame Street were created just for me.
"When we think clearly, we discover that only a few needs (shelter, food, water, air)"
Republicans have always denied those should be rights...
This is also true. Basically, Republicans don't like the idea of any rights at all. You should never receive anything for free. You should receive only what you earn, no more and no less. It makes me wonder how Republicans imagine they survived their own early childhood.
So of course, it bothers Republicans that there are still a few things left that are free for everybody, like air and sunshine. This is why they hate nature. As much as it is technologically possible, they strive to buy up and then break up the global commons into tiny pieces, so that they can sell them off to the rest of us at a steeply marked-up price.
Right-wingery at its most basic: a bigot has an absolute right to discriminate against others and ruin their lives out of sheer spite, and anyone who disagrees with that bigot is violating their sacred constitutional right to be mean-spirited in ways that bring actual harm to other people.
If the rapist retakes power, gender transition will be illegal by Feb. 15. Heed my words.
Project 2025 says that absolutely NO taxpayer dollars should be spent on trans care, punishable by a termination of funds. Which is going to have every hospital collecting Medicare/Medicaid/Tricare (i.e. all of them) dropping the services. Plus kids would be forbidden to transition even socially at school.
Can’t Joe Manchin just fuck off from the rest of us and become a full- time taking head for Fox News already?
Can we volunteer him for a job in Antarctica?