Feb. 28, 2024 - IVF rights up for Senate vote today

… IVF rights … Prison deaths … Ukraine weapons fix … Texas execution …

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Senate to Vote on IVF Rights Today

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) said yesterday that today she’s seeking what’s known as a unanimous consent vote on enshrining a federal right for people to make babies using frozen baby seeds, also known as Dippin’ Dots™.

Unanimous consent means it can only pass if not even one single senator objects. Which one of them will.

Why? Because In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) cannot be done without destroying embryos. 

Why? Because to maximize the odds of F happening IV, you need to throw a lot of sperm — like, a full day’s PornHub supply — at a batch of embryos in the hope that one of them will end up being sufficiently viable to differentiate and become more developed than, say, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). 

And that often means you get multiple embryos fertilized. And some of them die! 

Why? Maybe they don’t implant. Maybe some get flushed because there’s too many to try implanting. Maybe Mommy doesn’t WANT dodecatuplets!

And maybe, since we’ve collectively decided that it doesn’t take a village to raise a child — it just takes stoic individualism, a stiff upper-lip, entrepreneurship, self-marketing skills, and stock-market savvy — and since Republicans are hellbent on freezing not embryos but food funding, maybe people just can’t afford to have as many kids anymore.

Anyway, in the Senate today, thanks to Duckworth, reportedly a former embryo herself, every Republican “No” vote is sacred. So it’ll only take one to flush a lot of GOP campaigns away.

Caged Heat Deaths

Bureau of Prisons Director Colette Peters is testifying today before the Senate Judiciary Committee — about all of her guests who keep dying. And not just the prisoners we choose to kill. (Pres. Joe Biden has yet to make good on his pledge to kill the federal death penalty, potentially dooming unknown numbers of people of color and poverty to the tender mercies of Represident Donald Trump.).

Also testifying will be Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz. His office just released a report on all the people who die in federal custody because of poor federal custodianing. The report looked at hundreds of deaths not including natural causes.

Turns out, a ton of people in custody kill themselves. Some because they’re put in their cages alone — probably the worst fate for a prisoner despite everything Hollywood tells us. And then while they’re in their cages alone they’re not tended to well enough to prevent them from ending their lives to escape the hell we put them in.

It is, of course, a monstrous thing that we as a society are so fearful of each other — and so willing to turn incarceration into a revenue engine for private “enterprise” — that this is where we are: Putting people in cages because they can’t handle living in the capitalist, individualistic cage we’ve put all of us in.

Anyway, funny/hopeful closing line!

Ukraine Standoff Solved!

Good news, I’ve saved Ukraine! Here’s the plan…

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says if he doesn’t get new weapons…now…then his nation will fall before the Russian onslaught, which so far has been stalled as more of an onandoffslaught. But…

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) won’t let the House vote on military funding for Ukraine, because some of the MAGA members who oppose it might take his precious gavel away just like they took it from not-anymore-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), at the White House meeting on all of this yesterday, tried to strongarm Johnson but did about as well as you might expect any 82-year-old to do at strongarming. But…

There’s an obvious way around a minority of the party that holds only a slim majority: Forge a coalition with Democrats.

That’s right, Johnson could cut a deal with the Democrats — despite them collectively being Satan — in which they’d agree to help Johnson put down any MAGA threat to his speakership (and hopefully squeeze other concessions from him).

OR…

Johnson could not cut a deal with Satan and simply let the Ukraine weapons bill come up for a vote anyway. And if MAGA revolts, Satan will have to decide whether to rescue Johnson or risk having the House fall into paralysis.

BUT

Here’s the thing. The military-industrial complex doesn’t need a funding bill in order to rescue Ukraine. The weapons already exist. The U.S. has a lot of weapons. So do the arms dealers!

There’s nothing preventing Pres. Joe Biden from telling Zelensky, “Here, wanna play with my toys?” What’s gonna happen? We’ll suddenly get invaded? According to Republicans, that’s already happening, and I, for one, welcome the rule of our undocumented overlords.

And there’s also all the weapons that the Pentagon hasn’t bought yet. America’s arms dealers have them! And if some bullshit SEC rules prevent them from giving away the death store or at least lend-leasing the store (that’s for you, history nerds), then there’s still another solution possible!

There’s nothing stopping American oligarchs on the right and the left from cutting checks. A judge just recently ruled that Elon Musk must return $56 billion in compensation he got from Tesla. Which means that the $50 or some-odd billion that Ukraine is hoping to get from us is literally less than the amount at stake in one single paycheck dispute.

That’s right, America’s billionaires take so much of our money, they could save Ukraine just by withholding on their paychecks.

Mere Christianity

It’s worth noting the dual precipices upon which we stand, and address why we may dive off soon.

In addition to the Ukraine-falling precipice, we’re also on the more familiar and more boring precipice of a potential government shutdown — with a key sticking point emerging in the fight over food aid for poor people who eat food.

As others have observed, if we do end up greenlighting The Fall of Kyiv and the slaughter of even more Ukrainians and the slow starvation of poor American kids, the single figure most responsible will be the single most extreme evangelical Christian to hold the speaker’s gavel.

Most on the left will cite all of that as proof that Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) therefore is not a real Christian. Which is, for one thing, a slur on non-Christians. That’s the implication if you say bad people can’t be Christians — you’re saying only non-Christians are bad people. That’s called “religious bigotry” and we don’t do that, do we, class?

Arguably worse than the religious bigotry is missing the point that genuine actual Christians are capable of starving kids and welcome-matting the Russian army. “Christian” ≠ “good.” “Christian” = “Member of the Christian faith.”

That’s important to understand because three years after Jan. 6, we’re still treating membership in a Christian denomination as prima facie evidence of overall harmlessness and essential trustability. It’s not. Any more than any other religion is.

Hell, there’s some evidence that atheists are generally more moral or at least less likely to get caught than religious people — who ostensibly believe they’ll go to LITERAL FUCKING HELL for doing bad things and still do them anyway!

Never forget that for 2,000 years, Christianity looked a lot more like Johnson’s faith — Crusades and witch hunts! — than the soft-focus faith of hippie Jesus, an invention even more recent than The Rapture.

You can argue that Johnson’s actions are inconsistent with the moral tenets of Christianity, but you can’t argue that committing those actions means one isn’t Christian. Christian just means you believe in the theology of Christianity: Jesus is God, etc.

The lesson of both 9/11 and 1/6 is that when someone tells you who they are — and what actions are consistent with their faith — believe them.

Rapture Today

Today’s the day, folks. Last month, Rep. Mark Pocan (R-WI), the chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, told the folks behind the National Prayer Breakfast to spill the beans about their global operations by today. And you thought no man shall know the hour!

So, what happens now? Obviously, as prophesied, the thousand-year war between good and evil. Or…

The fact that we haven’t heard anything from Pocan’s office suggests to me that he hasn’t gotten a response from the breakfast folks, formally known as the Fellowship Foundation but marketingly known as The Family because that sounds cooler.

I would be amazed if Pocan didn’t have a plan in his back pocket in the event The Family didn’t comply. So if I had to guess — which I don’t, but I’m gonna — I’d say this means that in the coming days (no man shall know the hour!) we’re going to see Pocan escalate this dispute somehow.

Democrats don’t control the House so they’re unlikely to get subpoenas out. But there’s other levers Pocan can pull.

And it’s important to remember what’s at stake. The Family stepped in to help right-wing evangelicals hold on to power in Guatemala – without anyone realizing it until I had to open my trap. And that’s just one country. The Family’s role in global geopolitics over the past quarter-century remains largely invisible. If Pocan pushes hard enough, we may get a dramatic look at the operations of a very important component of the constellation of Christian nationalist organizations.

Stay tuned!

Texas to Execute Guy Today Despite Jurors’ Second Thoughts

Convicted murderer Eric Cantu is set to be executed today by the state of Texas, despite a last-minute motion yesterday by the nation’s highest authority: Kim Kardashian.

Kardashian filed her most recent objection to the execution on Twitter last night. As she notes, a ton of evidence has emerged to suggest that Cantu didn’t actually murder his cousin and the cousin’s girlfriend in November 2000.

Three jurors have come forward to call for at least delaying the execution, saying they now have reasonable doubt. Which might just have something to do with living in a culture that teaches everyone to be certain about everything and that every fucking half-assed opinion is just as holy and sacred as a frozen embryo.

Without an outside intervention, such as Kardashian issuing a pardon, Cantu has only two chances left: He could win a stay of execution from the right-wing Supreme Court — which would have to break from its recent precedent that executing innocent people is cool if you do it by the book — or Cantu could be ruled ineligible for execution under Texas law by announcing that he’s beginning treatment to transition to a frozen embryo.

Campaign Watch

MICHIGAN Both Pres. Joe Biden and D4FRFP¹ Donald Trump won their primaries in Michigan last night. 

See how easy it was to tell that story in one sentence without gasbagging about November?

TCB

I KNOW, I KNOW I’m almost done with that new reporting I keep promising. I wanna do a Twitter thread on all the Pocan/Family stuff first, but then I’m gonna try to wrap up my three, count ‘em, three, stories revealing new details about the House GOP staff who worked on the impeachment of Homeland [sic] Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

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Go get ‘em, kids…

1. D4FRFP = Disgraced, quadicted, fraudster, rapist, former President.