Open Thread Jan. 2: Global Warming Shit Just Got Serious
The looming extinction of polar bears is a tragedy, but their disappearance won’t affect our day-to-day lives. But what if we had to live without chocolate? That’s right — climate change could all but eliminate the growing conditions cacao needs by 2050. Genetic engineering is hoping to develop a plant that will tolerate the drier conditions expected to prevail by then.
We talk a lot about Republican efforts to curtail voting rights through ID laws and inconvenient voting restrictions, but the new Jim Crow really relies on a more insidious method: felony conviction. It’s incredibly effective. In Alabama, for example, 17% of eligible voters are black women; only 9% are black men. In Florida, there are 1.7 million ex-felons who are denied the right to vote. For perspective, that’s almost double Delaware’s entire population. Trump won the state by a little over 100,000 votes, so a proposal to restore their voting rights could turn it blue overnight.
Philadelphia’s Mummers Parade is an acquired taste, but yesterday’s edition featured a story I’m surprised hasn’t gone national: a string band led by a sixth-grader. When Teddy Kudrick, captain of the Duffy String Band, died in October at age 52 of a heart attack, the band elevated his son Jake, 12, to replace his father. The kid did the old man proud, finishing tied for fourth among captains and leading Duffy to a ninth-place finish, its highest in 50 years.
Also, Trump tweeted some stuff, but it’s past time to realize that while the media focuses on his tweets, nobody who actually works in the administration pays any attention except for figuring out new routes to maneuver around him. Point and laugh if you like, but laugh with your eyes open.
Hopefully chocolate will last the rest of my lifetime – I expect to be gone long before 2050….
Michelle Bachmann is currently asking God if she should run for Al Franken’s Senate seat.
Down with the patriarchy!
God needs a better method of recalling some of his shoddier work. She’d be a good start.
Breaking: Sen. Orrin Hatch announces he won’t run for re-election in 2018.
I always thought Bachmann was kind of hot in her own religious right wing religious nut kind of way
She’ll be hotter once she finds out where she’s spending eternity. Much hotter.
I note with some interest how you simply assumed that felons would vote Democratic. 🙂
The Fourteenth Amendment allows the suspension of constitutional rights, with due process of law, which is how felons can lose their right to vote. Would I be incorrect in assuming that you support felons losing their Second Amendment rights, in perpetuity, and that it’s only voting privileges you wish to see restored?
Fact is most people vote Democratic. The Electoral College takes care of that inconvenience.
Tell us more stories about cement.
You misassume what I consider 2nd Amendment rights in the first place.
Besides that, voting can’t kill me. Your freedom sticks can. My position is that if we’re going to take their taxes and they are otherwise citizens, the only reason to take away their right to vote is your party also presumes a majority of them will vote Democratic. Assuming you can do math, you know your objection was an ironic one, as we can all read the data equally well. Indeed, an entire book called “The New Jim Crow” was written about this, which is what I was referencing. If you object to its premise, take it up with the author, or go to its Amazon page and let loose.
The 14th Amendment, just by the by, nowhere confers rights to corporations, yet it has been mistakenly taken that way since the 19th century. Since you seem to find ethereal discussions about “rights” so interesting, what say you to that? Far more interesting topic than what a self-styled libertarian thinks about the obvious amendments.
August 2049, oh by the way, many scientist agree we are going to postpone the extinction of chocolate until 2090, but, that does not mean we are letting those sons of bitches Republicans off the hook on this climate change stuff. Just wait till 2090, then we’ll show them.
This fucking dirty douche water Dils has floated to the top of the toilet water.
How’s goes it, my dude?
Alby asked me:
The purpose of corporate personhood is simple: it means that corporations have the right to due process of law. Without that, a corporation could simply be judged guilty or responsible, without the necessity of a trial, whenever either accused of wrongdoing or the respondent in a tort action. Perhaps you believe that corporations shouldn’t be entitled to due process?
It’s obvious that corporations do not, and cannot, have all of the rights of a living person. For example, they cannot register to vote, nor can they withhold documents by asserting Fifth Amendment rights. Since corporations cannot be jailed, they have no right to bail. The applicability of the First Amendment to corporations is spotty.
“For example, they cannot register to vote,”
With dumb fucks like you voting, they don’t need the vote.
@Dana: That’s not quite why corporate personhood exists, as the conditions you describe did not hold before the concept was inserted into a ruling by a court clerk. So no, you couldn’t find a corporation guilty without a trial.
The concept exists because a corporation exists to limit liability, and what good would that do if it just existed as a pass-through mechanism? In short, the reason they want corporations to be sued is to protect its stockholders from being sued personally.
I’m just always interested in hearing people in the Party of Personal Responsibility demonstrate that they don’t actually believe in the concept except as it applies to people they don’t like.