gAlienLifeform

gAlienLifeform , 1 day ago

They talk nicer, but in reality

Personal possessions, including medicines and necessary medical devices, are routinely thrown away. It’s a quotidian event that Leilani Farha, the United Nations special rapporteur on adequate housing, described as a “cruelty” that she hasn’t seen in other impoverished corners of the world.

web.archive.org/…/sweeps-of-homeless-camps-in-cal…)

“'The idea that a government would deny people those services … when they have nowhere else to go suggests a kind of cruelty that is unsurpassed,” Farha told Business Insider. “It’s an attempt to erase people. Worse than erase — I can only use the word annihilate. It is a denial of someone’s humanity.'”

…

Under international human rights law, governments are required “to apply the maximum of available resources to upgrading informal settlements” like slums, shanty towns, and homeless encampments.

web.archive.org/…/un-expert-san-francisco-homeles…

“The struggle in the south is to legalize and regularize encampments,” she said. “Here, the struggle is simply to be able to create an encampment. In the south, there’s sort of a blind eye that has turned. Once an informal settlement is created, it’s established. Whereas here, they can’t create them.”

In the Bay Area, Farha talked to many people who were temporarily living in an encampment before they were ordered to move by city officials during a “tent sweep.”

“It’s damaging because they always have to move,” she says. “They’re treated like nonentities. Sometimes they say (belongings are) put in storage, but more often they’ll dump everyone’s possessions into one Dumpster. It’s horrible. It’s not dignified. The people have nowhere to go. It’s illogical. It’s tragic.”

web.archive.org/…/Leilani-Farah-UN-rapporteur-hom…

Nice words don’t change the fact that we’re violating international law and abusing vulnerable people, they actually make it a lot worse because a lot more people would recognize what we’re doing and be horrified if moderate Dems didn’t do this propagandizing bullshit.

gAlienLifeform OP , 1 day ago (edited 1 day ago)

This is basically the Mueller report all over again

DOJ: Oof, I really do not want to have to prosecute someone the Republicans like because they will make our lives hell in every single way, but this looks pretty bad… Ok, I’m just going to detail every single bad thing, but then just sum it up by saying the evidence doesn’t quite establish things beyond any reasonable doubt and everyone can see what they want here.

Media: DOJ MORE OR LESS FINDS ROGER STONE SENTENCING ALL GOOD

Me: … But, like four attorneys involved in this quit, and Bill Barr got personally involv-

GOP: Even the dad-gum librul media couldn’t find anything on Trump, yee-haw!

e; y’know sometimes you have to read a sentence after you wrote it several times even to realize it really needed a comma somewhere

gAlienLifeform OP , 1 day ago (edited 1 day ago)

Here is a good backgrounder article I found - web.archive.org/…/friends-family-paint-picture-of…

e; better phrasing

gAlienLifeform , 1 day ago

Meanwhile, if they tried to do this to Israeli companies they could be arrested

gAlienLifeform , 1 day ago

Relatedly, “A series of recent groundbreaking investigative reports unveiled what many advocates for police accountability have known for decades: Child sex abuse by law enforcement officials is far too common across our country. Systemic failures within policing—coupled with lax oversight by police departments, prosecutors, and judges—too often shield police officers from meaningful accountability.”

gAlienLifeform , 2 days ago

Nah, we shouldn’t be rewarding anyone who worked with Joe Manchin to attack the environment - web.archive.org/…/manchin-kelly-urge-biden-to-ope…

Out of all the likely names I’ve seen, NC governor Roy Cooper seems like the strongest

gAlienLifeform , 2 days ago

“If we aren’t promoting the most skilled people in our society, how am I supposed to figure out where to invest all this money I inherited?”

gAlienLifeform , 3 days ago

Don’t Heather Heyer Trump supporters please, thanks

gAlienLifeform , 3 days ago

Denying him the photo op by refusing to go to his public event but having a private meeting with him to tell him he’s a shithead war criminal who needs to stop interfering in our election (hopefully)

gAlienLifeform , 3 days ago

the appeal to the Supreme Court is not about whether it was a good idea for the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals

The Supreme Court decides the scope of appeals and can ask for reargument if they think the parties are talking about the wrong issues

I think that it is in fact true that “Nothing in the Constitution compels a state court to provide a particular measure of deference to a state official’s confession of error.”

“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

If this travesty counts as a due process of law then the phrase has lost all meaning.

gAlienLifeform , 3 days ago

In a separate interview Monday with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Sanders said he is “sure” he will ultimately endorse Harris for the Democratic nomination but stressed that he wants to see her put forth an agenda “that speaks to the long-neglected needs of working families,” specifically calling for a permanent expansion of the child tax credit and an increase in the stagnant federal minimum wage.

“I just want to make sure that her campaign understands that for too many people in this country, when they look at Washington, D.C., they feel ignored. They feel insulted that people are not understanding what is going on in their lives,” said Sanders. “Life expectancy for working-class people is 10 years shorter than it is for the rich. And working-class people want a government that represents them and not corporate America.”

This is all good stuff for people who like Bernie and for people who like Kamala, remind Kamala/give her the opportunity to remind everyone else she supported Medicare for All in the 2020 primaries and was willing to get into specifics

She’s willing to go along with moderates when that’s what the teams she’s on has already decided (see; her time as California AG dealing with a moderate governor, her time as a VP dealing with Biden), but when she’s starting from square one she looks left for support. She’s not my favorite Dem ever, but she’s absolutely someone we can work with.

gAlienLifeform , 3 days ago

How does refusing to acknowledge the successor to the 2024 primary winner as the party’s nominee so pundits and convention delegates can push whoever they want at voters instead serve democracy?

gAlienLifeform , 4 days ago (edited 3 days ago)

RIP Republican talking points against violent political rhetoric, July 13, 20234 - whenever Republicans remembered black politicians exist

gAlienLifeform , 3 days ago

My brain still struggles to accept that it’s not 2013 some days

gAlienLifeform , 4 days ago

Also, I’d be amazed if they didn’t have a way to get contact information from non-political sources. Like, off the top of my head - if I’m running a Dem campaign I’d be talking to every car dealership I could and seeing if I can buy their list of people who signed up for updates on EV availability to see if I can turn some of those people to donors, and I’m pretty certain there’s no laws or regulations that would stop them from doing that.

gAlienLifeform , 4 days ago

If we had the time to rerun primaries in fifty states and ask the voters I would say we should do that, but since we don’t and Harris is a successor all the voters could have forseen when casting ballots for Biden we should just go with her.

What I’m not looking forward to is having to hear the opinions of party insider convention delegates over the next few weeks. If they try to act like extra special voters and give the nomination to someone other than Harris that’s going to be a slap in the face to voters and make any sense of party unity totally implode.

gAlienLifeform , 4 days ago

If the delegates get to swoop in at the last to make someone nobody’s ever heard of the nominee instead of Harris, that’s going to be a coronation that totally disregards voters. Harris being the nominee is what would have happened anyway if Biden had to step down and the logical way to go here.

Harris is not my favorite person in the world, but I guarantee there’s a chunk of convention delegates who want someone like a Manchin or a Bloomberg or a Clinton or someone else worse.

gAlienLifeform , 3 days ago

Most countries don’t have the idiotic mess of 50 different sets of election laws and the fucking cancer that is the Republican party to deal with. We should be able to run an election with a couple of days notice, but if we tried anything like that GOP attorneys would take it to court and right wing judges would cause all sorts of chaos.

gAlienLifeform , 5 days ago

They just want to destabilize it until they can steal power, but if anything gets destroyed along the way they’ll just blame the libs

gAlienLifeform , 5 days ago

They’re flinging bad faith criticisms at the wall and seeing what sticks, they haven’t thought that far ahead

gAlienLifeform , 5 days ago

“That 81 year old is way too old for the job, vote for our 78 year old!” is a bold strategy

gAlienLifeform , 5 days ago

Well, at least there isn’t anything controversial going on overseas that’s got the college kids riled up this time /s

gAlienLifeform , 5 days ago

I mean, this does create the obvious question - “If Biden is too old to run for President, isn’t he too old to be president? Doesn’t he care about the safety of America [blah blah Fox News talking points blah]”

I personally think it’s fine because the job of President mostly gets done by the team of staffers around the White House, but we’ll need a good answer for that question when a reporter asks it

gAlienLifeform , 6 days ago

Verily

gAlienLifeform , 6 days ago

I don’t recall learning about the last time the Tops grocery shooter looked at porn

gAlienLifeform , 6 days ago

I think I agree, but I’d phrase it a bit differently. The problem in our country isn’t division, it’s that there’s an energetic fascist movement that needs to be stopped. The problem with assassinating Trump is that it gives that movement a martyr and would very much energize them (disorganize them too, since they wouldn’t know for sure who to follow anymore, but they’ve never needed to be too organized to do damage and they could do plenty before succession fueled infighting really started to take a toll).

Killing Trump won’t kill his ideas, the only way to do that is to embarrass Trump and Trumpism badly, so I think the best series of events would be a) Trump loses the election, b) prosecutors explain Trump’s many crimes in meticulous detail to a series of juries who sentence Trump to years and years behind bars, c) Trump dies of a heart attack while taking a shit in prison.

The fact that the voters already did a) once in 2020 and the system’s let us down on b) is deeply frustrating and worth acknowledging for the sake of identifying the country’s underlying problems (it’s the politicians and lawyers more than it is the voters), but it doesn’t change the fact that assassinating Trump is the last thing we want to do at this point.

gAlienLifeform OP , 7 days ago

Can exposure to THC affect embryos? It seems really likely, but it also seems like the science isn’t entirely clear

Available studies on marijuana exposure in pregnancy were reviewed and support some degree of developmental disruption, including an increased risk of fetal growth restriction and adverse neurodevelopmental consequences. However, much of the existing prenatal marijuana research was performed in the 1980s, when quantities of THC were lower and the frequency of use was less. Additionally, most human studies are also limited and conflicting as most studies have been observational or retrospective, relying primarily on patient self-report and confounded by polysubstance abuse and small sample sizes, precluding determination of a causal effect specific for marijuana. Given the paucity of evidence, it is currently recommended to avoid using marijuana while pregnant or when breastfeeding.

(Archived)

Idk, I’m not a doctor and I haven’t done a ton of reading on this. I want children to grow up healthy, and part of that is preventing them from being exposed to chemicals that will mess up their development, but another important part of that is not throwing their parents in jail or prison unless it’s absolutely necessary, so idk how I feel about this.

gAlienLifeform OP , 7 days ago

It’s how Trump administrations behave and what we’ll get more of if Kamala doesn’t win

gAlienLifeform OP , 7 days ago

It’s crazy that it has taken until 2024 for any kind of accountability process to get started

gAlienLifeform OP , 8 days ago

Biden has recommended a lot of best practices that would be an improvement of they were implemented, but he hasn’t even tried to make them a requirement and he’s simultaneously signed off on a ton of new unconditional funding for police departments, and he’s bragged about doing this and campaigned on it.

And, like, I shouldn’t have to explain this but just to make it very clear - cops lie all the time, and they brutalize and kill people for no good reason all the time, and Biden’s out here doing PR work for them and giving them more capacity to harass and brutalize and kill people. And I’m still going to vote for him, and I tell other people to too, but I can’t stop thinking about how things have gotten so fucking bad in this country that I’m voting for the party and candidate who will kill me and my friends more slowly. It’s not sustainable.