The Political Thread

[sheridan]

As a doctor in a COVID unit, I'm running out of compassion for the unvaccinated. Get the shot

[Tjm86]

... many parents and politicians see school as a place to provide free child-care first, and education second.

To be honest, for a significant number of parents / kids in this country now, 'education' as a purpose of school does not even fit in the top 100 ...

[CalHab]

As a doctor in a COVID unit, I'm running out of compassion for the unvaccinated. Get the shot

That's a very powerful piece.

[milstar]

https://theconversation.com/out-of-afghanistan-joe-biden-and-the-future-of-americas-foreign-policy-166914

Sounds too optimistic if you ask me. Military complex won't like this a one bit, but nevertheless it's one decision that begs to be (finally) done.

[Funt Solo]

Be careful out there: London transport staff warned of anti-mask posters with razor blades

[IndigoPrime]

I remember seeing that. Awful. Mind you, having just returned from a school meeting where mask use was "recommended", I'm not sure anti-mask posters are necessary anymore. I'd estimate perhaps a fifth of parents were wearing a mask in the closed, unventilated hall. Great.

[Funt Solo]

Lots of criticism over theocracies like in Iran and now Afghanistan, but there's a stealth theocracy in power now in the USA. The supreme court has been heavily weighted with right-wing evangelicals, to the extent that Texas now has some of the most severe and repressive anti-abortion laws in the US - just one step away from Poland. The supreme court decided not to rule on it, which opens up more of these laws from other states.

Meanwhile, they did choose to stop an execution because the man requested that a priest lay hands on him as he's being executed, and the court are considering it.

See how humans pretending to be working for their fictional God are taking charge of life AND death in the good old U.S. of A. Hallelujah!

[sheridan]

Lots of criticism over theocracies like in Iran and now Afghanistan, but there's a stealth theocracy in power now in the USA.

I think they failed their stealth check, they're not exactly subtle about it!

[Tjm86]

I'm not sure America is quite at the same level as the likes of Iraq or Afghanistan but it is definitely a disturbing trend.  Right now it seems like America is a little too chaotic for that.

If anything this is more of Trump's legacy.  As you say, the make up of the Supreme Court has been tilted dangerously to the right.  State legislatures have definitely been taking advantage of that fact.

You can just imagine the response though in many of those states to Biden's announcement this morning about vaccinations. 

[Funt Solo]

The anti-abortion law in Texas prompted evangelical sky-god, death-cultists (i.e. Christians) to set up a web site where you could betray your fellow humans by naming and shaming them for attempting to access abortion health care. The idea is to try to get service providers and patients prosecuted. Then this happened...

How TikTokers took down a Texas anti-abortion site

[JayzusB.Christ]

Fair play.  Good to see young people doing what young people are good at doing - fucking with the system to the point where the old people trying to control them can't keep up.

A mate-of-a-mate was recently on a Whatsapp group ranting on about how soft young people are compared to us (coupled with a bit of 'they don't even know what gender blah fucking blah'), as if it wasn't said by older folks about every generation going back to the boomers and possibly before, and as if it's anything other than a sad attempt to deal with our increasing irrelevance as we stumble through middle age and watch people become cooler than us.

[The Legendary Shark]

Pfft. Ain't nobody cooler than a Squaxx.

[JayzusB.Christ]

Point.

[Tjm86]

It feels a little like this needs to be rebranded "The End of The World Thread".  It really does feel like the wheels have come off completely this week.  For the last few years we've managed to limp through a global pandemic with mass excess deaths, immeasurable damage to the educational opportunities of youngsters and a healthcare backlog that is probably going to do just as good a job as Covid.  The climate crisis has added to the tribulations for quite a chunk of the population too.

Back in 2016 there was much mockery made of some of the more extreme prognostications about the impact of Brexit.  We all remember Project Fear with its predictions of shortages of pretty much everything and anything, of the country grinding to a halt or food rotting in the fields.  The news this week though really does make me wonder how wide of the mark they actually were.

So when Grant Schapps goes on TV and tells everyone there is no need to panic-buy petrol, traffic is brought to a standstill around petrol stations across the country.  Either that or the petrol stations end up closed due to depleted stocks they are unable to replenish.  There are reports that the army is being put on standby to lend a hand.

Right now it feels like we're living through a Stephen Baxter novel.  We all know how well they end ...

8-(

[IndigoPrime]

And yet if there was a general election, our rotten voting system combined with a population happy to eat shit whenever their betters tell them to and opposition parties who'd sooner punch each other's faces off than working together to oust the Tories, would currently almost certainly result in another Tory majority, albeit probably a slightly smaller one.