And we know Trump cares deeply about kids born with disabilities. Just ask his nephew, whom he wisely counseled to let HIS disabled son "just die" on the grounds that "he doesn't even know who you are," and (presumably) can't be relied on to extend the family grift like his telegenic cousins.
Mexico City Policy, as in you have to go to a Mexican (or Canadian) city to get one? As if enough women and girls weren't losing their fertility or dying to "protect" a few actually viable pregnancies. As if the foster care system weren't already overloaded. As if the babies who are aborted for severe disabilities are likely to get adopted even if they are born.
We know all this stuff. We've known it for years. We also know that they don't give a shit, and that reason and respect for individual rights have nothing to do with it. Respect for anything doesn't have anything to do with it. Our country is an Enlightenment entity. But they don't like it, don't believe in it and don't care.
Christianity, at its core, is incredibly nonjudgmental, forgiving and full of acceptance. Unless you're a money-changer. That is, a capitalist. That is, a laissez-faire, opportunistic capitalist without scruple about mixing money and religion. But, they don't care. Where's the 800 number owned by the Catholic Church dedicated to letting every possible woman know that, if you want to have your baby and are thinking about abortion for whatever reason, the Church will take care of you. You'll be housed and fed and loved and respected.
And allowed to decide whether to keep your baby or not once you feel up to it. On the one hand, in defense of the Church, they were experiencing some financial stress relating to lawsuits and settlements over their harboring of pedophile priests for decades. On the other hand, because vocations were in the toilet, some amazing real estate was available that was unbelievably well suited to, guess what, homes for unwed mothers or anyone simply wanting a room and a place to stay while pregnant. Do you know this toll-free number?
Is it circulated everywhere, 1-800-HAVE YOUR BABY or whatever? No, because they don't give a shit. So they should shut the fuck up, back off, mind their own business and go after Bill Barr who, together with Herr Donald, hosted an execution extravaganza on his way out at Justice. I believe the Church is against capital punishment. But, they kinda went after Biden, who tried to take care of people and defend the poor and not deprive children of food and seniors of medications and respected normal church-state boundaries.
But, fuck him. Fuck all of us, because the entire Republican coalition doesn't care. Though, I will say, this shithole we're ending up in has 'evangelical' written all over it. They're the sine-qua of this shit. And they hate the Bible, the real Bible, as much as the Constitution because, well, they just do. Hence, literalism and originalism or whatever. They're equally bullshit. This is authoritarianism. Pure, arbitrary authoritarianism. Sorry to make the point, but we must answer them on their ground to some extent. We can do it, however, without selling out.
In fact, we can be truer to ourselves. But we have to fight them where they are. We should know that by now. They're never going to see the world our way.
I’ve never grasped the thinking behind the Hyde Amendment. Perhaps Joe Biden, who as a senator was instrumental in getting it passed, will explain it someday.
Taxpayers don’t get a line-item veto. If I could check a box on my tax return, none of my money would go to nuclear weapons or Stephen Miller’s salary. Are there similar restrictions on tax money being spent on anything besides health care of women and LGBTQ people?
An emperor of ignorance, leading the stupid, to the dumbest of promised lands. Outcomes don’t matter. It’s all artifice, smoke and mirrors. He’s ticking a box. Any shithead with an agenda and the ability to flatter the PoS (and it’s not hard, just lay on the superlatives until one of you passes out) can get whatever they want. I can’t believe we have (at least) another 4 years of this shit. 🤬
"This is being presented by conservative media as him barring the use of taxpayer dollars to fund abortions."
Mooseballs Mussolini, his proxies, his trained attack Dachshunds, and Right wingnuts in general thinks this is a good thing. It is, in reality, nothing more than political theater being performed for the benefit of the MAGAdroid Rubes given the Hyde Amendment. As further proof that this is a heaping pile of steaming bovine scat comes from the White House itself:
"Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Enforces Overwhelmingly Popular Demand to Stop Taxpayer Funding of Abortion
...
Contrary to this longstanding commonsense policy, the previous administration embedded federal funding of elective abortion in a wide variety of government programs.
...
>> Federal statutes protecting access to emergency medical care for pregnant women under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) and protecting personal health information under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) remain in full effect.
> Executive Order 14079 recategorized abortion as “healthcare” in order to provide taxpayer funding for elective abortions.
* "Overwhelming popular demand" amongst the pseudochristians maybe, but not with Americans in general: "Currently, 63% say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 36% say it should be illegal in all or most cases.
...
About three-quarters of White evangelical Protestants (73%) think abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. By contrast, 86% of religiously unaffiliated Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, as do 71% of Black Protestants, 64% of White nonevangelical Protestants and 59% of Catholics." https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-abortion/
* Would the Fulvous Flatulence care to add some clarification by naming even a few programs outside the usual suspects, i.e. medical, where abortion funds are baked in?
* Can someone please inform Ob/Gyns and ER staff that they shouldn't be scared shitless that some RINO busybody with no skin in the game will insist that the emergency abortion was really an elective abortion? After all, both the EMTALA and HIPPA protect the doctors, nurses, other support medical personel, and the pregnant woman, yes? (Offer void where prohibited by law.)
* It's common knowledge that terminating a pregnancy for *any* reason other than an immediate danger to the woman's physical health -- or death -- is not a medical emergency. An ectopic pregnancy isn't an emergency -- yet -- so let's ride it out for a while longer. Being mentally stressed out about having another mouth to feed when you can't afford to feed your existing family is not a medical emergency. A pregnant woman working on an assembly line getting fired (even if she is the sole producer of income) due to potential and actual lost time is not a medical emergency.
* Since those in the military can choose where they are to be stationed, taxpayers shouldn't be held responsible if they decide to serve in a state or nation that prohibits abortions.
Keep in mind that Mango also keeps insisting that “everyone wanted” Roe overturned, by which he means, “everyone I listen to.” So of course he thinks his gag rule overwhelmingly popular.
In a 7,000ft-high marshy spot in the cold, rugged eastern Sierra mountains, two groups of mammals scurried around at night. One was going about their normal nocturnal routine of hunting worms. The other was hoping for a glimpse of an elusive creature: the Mount Lyell shrew, the only known California mammal never photographed alive.
The three young student scientists faced a tight timeline. They baited 150 pitfall traps – small cups dug into the earth to catch wandering creatures – with cat food and mealworms and monitored them across a 600ft area, checking each trap every two hours for any signs of their goal. They slept no more than two hours at a time. Shrews have such a fast metabolism that they die in traps quickly, one of the reasons this species had never been photographed or studied live.
Despite initial skepticism, they caught five shrews within the first 24 hours, working mostly during the night and early morning. They filmed and photographed the tiny creatures, and clipped tiny flaps of skin from the animals’ ears for genetic testing later to confirm they’d caught the right species.
When he held one, Prakrit Jain, a 20-year-old student at University of California, Berkeley, and intern at the California Academy of Sciences, noticed how remarkably small and light the animals were. Less than 4in long, the lightest shrew was just a gram-and-a-half – about the weight of two paper clips. “It was very different from holding a mouse or a hamster,” he says. “These shrews are almost the size of an insect.”...
Great article as always, Robyn. But ixnay on the "false claim" trope. "Trump’s executive order, by the way, tells a startlingly huge bullshit lie (even by trump standards)."
Betcha he's charging all their offices with full-price rentals for themselves and their staffs ( even tho' the staffs are more likely to be staying at the Days Inn out by I95 ). Grifting all the way....
"By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Purpose. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, an amendment essential to the success of our Republic, enshrines the right of the American people to speak freely in the public square without Government interference."
Soooo... does that mean I can read classified documents I found (somehow) in my bathroom to my friends in "the public square"? It was OK for Fearless Leader.
Why would the government classify any documents? If Putin is being sent them, why shouldn't you get to read them. Freedom of Speech shouldn't just be for the crony dictator friends of the proven rapist and hater of our troops and cops.
Learn legal versus lawful in my podcast here:
https://soberchristiangentlemanpodcast.substack.com/p/s2-ep-43-legal-versus-lawful-education-5c3
And we know Trump cares deeply about kids born with disabilities. Just ask his nephew, whom he wisely counseled to let HIS disabled son "just die" on the grounds that "he doesn't even know who you are," and (presumably) can't be relied on to extend the family grift like his telegenic cousins.
I'm an ace and even I can see nobody stops having sex just because they've a strong chance of dying from a pregnancy complication.
Mexico City Policy, as in you have to go to a Mexican (or Canadian) city to get one? As if enough women and girls weren't losing their fertility or dying to "protect" a few actually viable pregnancies. As if the foster care system weren't already overloaded. As if the babies who are aborted for severe disabilities are likely to get adopted even if they are born.
We know all this stuff. We've known it for years. We also know that they don't give a shit, and that reason and respect for individual rights have nothing to do with it. Respect for anything doesn't have anything to do with it. Our country is an Enlightenment entity. But they don't like it, don't believe in it and don't care.
Christianity, at its core, is incredibly nonjudgmental, forgiving and full of acceptance. Unless you're a money-changer. That is, a capitalist. That is, a laissez-faire, opportunistic capitalist without scruple about mixing money and religion. But, they don't care. Where's the 800 number owned by the Catholic Church dedicated to letting every possible woman know that, if you want to have your baby and are thinking about abortion for whatever reason, the Church will take care of you. You'll be housed and fed and loved and respected.
And allowed to decide whether to keep your baby or not once you feel up to it. On the one hand, in defense of the Church, they were experiencing some financial stress relating to lawsuits and settlements over their harboring of pedophile priests for decades. On the other hand, because vocations were in the toilet, some amazing real estate was available that was unbelievably well suited to, guess what, homes for unwed mothers or anyone simply wanting a room and a place to stay while pregnant. Do you know this toll-free number?
Is it circulated everywhere, 1-800-HAVE YOUR BABY or whatever? No, because they don't give a shit. So they should shut the fuck up, back off, mind their own business and go after Bill Barr who, together with Herr Donald, hosted an execution extravaganza on his way out at Justice. I believe the Church is against capital punishment. But, they kinda went after Biden, who tried to take care of people and defend the poor and not deprive children of food and seniors of medications and respected normal church-state boundaries.
But, fuck him. Fuck all of us, because the entire Republican coalition doesn't care. Though, I will say, this shithole we're ending up in has 'evangelical' written all over it. They're the sine-qua of this shit. And they hate the Bible, the real Bible, as much as the Constitution because, well, they just do. Hence, literalism and originalism or whatever. They're equally bullshit. This is authoritarianism. Pure, arbitrary authoritarianism. Sorry to make the point, but we must answer them on their ground to some extent. We can do it, however, without selling out.
In fact, we can be truer to ourselves. But we have to fight them where they are. We should know that by now. They're never going to see the world our way.
You do amazing research 👏 thank you!
I’ve never grasped the thinking behind the Hyde Amendment. Perhaps Joe Biden, who as a senator was instrumental in getting it passed, will explain it someday.
Taxpayers don’t get a line-item veto. If I could check a box on my tax return, none of my money would go to nuclear weapons or Stephen Miller’s salary. Are there similar restrictions on tax money being spent on anything besides health care of women and LGBTQ people?
The Hyde Amendment was one thing, but the Jekyll Amendment was far more benign.
I feel like that’s backwards?
Everything is backwards nowadays.
Assaulting cops is okay with the party of law and order, for example.
I will never forgive people who voted for this horror show.
Never ever.
An emperor of ignorance, leading the stupid, to the dumbest of promised lands. Outcomes don’t matter. It’s all artifice, smoke and mirrors. He’s ticking a box. Any shithead with an agenda and the ability to flatter the PoS (and it’s not hard, just lay on the superlatives until one of you passes out) can get whatever they want. I can’t believe we have (at least) another 4 years of this shit. 🤬
Hopefully minus 7 days and subtracting. 🤞
Hopefully even less. 🤞
"This is being presented by conservative media as him barring the use of taxpayer dollars to fund abortions."
Mooseballs Mussolini, his proxies, his trained attack Dachshunds, and Right wingnuts in general thinks this is a good thing. It is, in reality, nothing more than political theater being performed for the benefit of the MAGAdroid Rubes given the Hyde Amendment. As further proof that this is a heaping pile of steaming bovine scat comes from the White House itself:
"Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Enforces Overwhelmingly Popular Demand to Stop Taxpayer Funding of Abortion
...
Contrary to this longstanding commonsense policy, the previous administration embedded federal funding of elective abortion in a wide variety of government programs.
...
>> Federal statutes protecting access to emergency medical care for pregnant women under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) and protecting personal health information under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) remain in full effect.
> Executive Order 14079 recategorized abortion as “healthcare” in order to provide taxpayer funding for elective abortions.
...
>>For example, under President Biden, the Department of Defense reimbursed abortion-related travel expenses, the Department of Veterans Affairs allowed hospitals to provide abortions." https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/01/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-enforces-overwhelmingly-popular-demand-to-stop-taxpayer-funding-of-abortion/
* "Overwhelming popular demand" amongst the pseudochristians maybe, but not with Americans in general: "Currently, 63% say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 36% say it should be illegal in all or most cases.
...
About three-quarters of White evangelical Protestants (73%) think abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. By contrast, 86% of religiously unaffiliated Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, as do 71% of Black Protestants, 64% of White nonevangelical Protestants and 59% of Catholics." https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-abortion/
* Would the Fulvous Flatulence care to add some clarification by naming even a few programs outside the usual suspects, i.e. medical, where abortion funds are baked in?
* Can someone please inform Ob/Gyns and ER staff that they shouldn't be scared shitless that some RINO busybody with no skin in the game will insist that the emergency abortion was really an elective abortion? After all, both the EMTALA and HIPPA protect the doctors, nurses, other support medical personel, and the pregnant woman, yes? (Offer void where prohibited by law.)
* It's common knowledge that terminating a pregnancy for *any* reason other than an immediate danger to the woman's physical health -- or death -- is not a medical emergency. An ectopic pregnancy isn't an emergency -- yet -- so let's ride it out for a while longer. Being mentally stressed out about having another mouth to feed when you can't afford to feed your existing family is not a medical emergency. A pregnant woman working on an assembly line getting fired (even if she is the sole producer of income) due to potential and actual lost time is not a medical emergency.
* Since those in the military can choose where they are to be stationed, taxpayers shouldn't be held responsible if they decide to serve in a state or nation that prohibits abortions.
fnord
Keep in mind that Mango also keeps insisting that “everyone wanted” Roe overturned, by which he means, “everyone I listen to.” So of course he thinks his gag rule overwhelmingly popular.
Nice time:
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗵𝗿𝗲𝘄: 𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗮 𝘀𝘁𝘂𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗽𝗵𝗼𝘁𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗽𝗵 𝗺𝗮𝗺𝗺𝗮𝗹 𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗰𝗮𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗼𝗻 𝗳𝗶𝗹𝗺
In a 7,000ft-high marshy spot in the cold, rugged eastern Sierra mountains, two groups of mammals scurried around at night. One was going about their normal nocturnal routine of hunting worms. The other was hoping for a glimpse of an elusive creature: the Mount Lyell shrew, the only known California mammal never photographed alive.
The three young student scientists faced a tight timeline. They baited 150 pitfall traps – small cups dug into the earth to catch wandering creatures – with cat food and mealworms and monitored them across a 600ft area, checking each trap every two hours for any signs of their goal. They slept no more than two hours at a time. Shrews have such a fast metabolism that they die in traps quickly, one of the reasons this species had never been photographed or studied live.
Despite initial skepticism, they caught five shrews within the first 24 hours, working mostly during the night and early morning. They filmed and photographed the tiny creatures, and clipped tiny flaps of skin from the animals’ ears for genetic testing later to confirm they’d caught the right species.
When he held one, Prakrit Jain, a 20-year-old student at University of California, Berkeley, and intern at the California Academy of Sciences, noticed how remarkably small and light the animals were. Less than 4in long, the lightest shrew was just a gram-and-a-half – about the weight of two paper clips. “It was very different from holding a mouse or a hamster,” he says. “These shrews are almost the size of an insect.”...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/26/mount-lyell-shrew-california-photograph
Those little critters are cute AF!
This is in my geographical region. I've seen them, never thought to try to photograph them.
Great article as always, Robyn. But ixnay on the "false claim" trope. "Trump’s executive order, by the way, tells a startlingly huge bullshit lie (even by trump standards)."
One week in, and the lies not only have kept on coming, but they are getting more destructive as we go along.
Art Cande... @ArtCandee
Taxpayers are funding House Republicans to go on a retreat at Donald Trump's Doral resort golf club today through Wednesday.
Betcha he's charging all their offices with full-price rentals for themselves and their staffs ( even tho' the staffs are more likely to be staying at the Days Inn out by I95 ). Grifting all the way....
Full price? That’s for losers. Stinky no doubt charged taxpayers double the normal rate.
Like he charged rack rate for his Secret Service detail.
"By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Purpose. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, an amendment essential to the success of our Republic, enshrines the right of the American people to speak freely in the public square without Government interference."
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/restoring-freedom-of-speech-and-ending-federal-censorship/
Seems to be a violation of the proven rapist and hater of our cops and troops Executive Order against Government Censorship.
It’s amazing how much of page space of these orders is taken up by his personal grievances and lies.
Soooo... does that mean I can read classified documents I found (somehow) in my bathroom to my friends in "the public square"? It was OK for Fearless Leader.
Why would the government classify any documents? If Putin is being sent them, why shouldn't you get to read them. Freedom of Speech shouldn't just be for the crony dictator friends of the proven rapist and hater of our troops and cops.
Whenever these fucking clowns mention "freedom," what they REALLY want is the freedom to beat, kill, harass, and ostracize anyone they see as "other."
How much money was spent catching, prosecuting, and imprisoning the J6 assholes, just for Trump to pardon them?
I actually read the headline to this article as Goebbels gag rule. Not far off.