Wednesday, July 10, 2013

The Texas Legislature Nuclear Option



It's the only way to be sure.

From the USA Today:
Texas House passes contentious abortion bill
Chris Tomlinson, AP 1:25 p.m. EDT July 10, 2013

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Texas House has approved new abortion limits in a second special session, less than two weeks after Senate Republicans failed to finish work on the bill amid a filibuster and raucous protests.

A final vote could be held as early as Friday in the Senate, where the measure died as the first special session expired. The House voted mostly along party lines Wednesday on what has become signature GOP legislation.

Lawmakers spent more than 10 hours debating it Tuesday, and Republicans rejected every attempt to amend the bill. Throngs of protesters were missing for Wednesday's mostly procedural vote after days of protests by supporters and opponents.

The bill requires doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, only allow abortions in surgical centers and ban abortions after 20 weeks.
...
Once again the lesson here could not possibly be clearer: Democrats are somehow equally to blame for all of this, and the only way to shut this whole thing down is to stop supporting Democrats...after which the American Taliban Party will proceed with the colonization/gulagization of all of Utero-America as part of its larger, more comprehensively medieval agenda...which will trigger the arrival of the space unicorns...who will seed the clouds with special vitamins and third party electrolytes (they have what Independents crave!) from low Earth orbit...causing the now-scattered, demoralized and demonized remnants of the Obot brigade to come out of the hidey holes into which they had been driven by the Christopath Orthodoxy Police, and into the welcoming embrace of the suddenly powerful and inexplicably well-organized Libertarian Constitution Green Solidarity Front (who are for, some reason, no longer diametrically opposed to one another but are now united in common cause to simultaneously severely limit and deregulate the banking industry, simultaneously enact massive government investments and restrictions to save the environment and tossing the government completely out of the environment business and letting the free market sort it out, etc.) 

According to the greatest political minds of our generation, this Coalition of the Cavilling will then quickly go through America's political sofa cushions until it has accumulated enough real political clout to drive the American Taliban Party back, back, back to their underwater city of R'lyeh for another 1,000 years.

This, of course, only represents my broad-stroke understanding of how the process is supposed to work:  being on the outs with greatest political minds of our generation, I am naturally not privy to the operational details of their awesome plan, but the flawless, air-tight logic of it all appears to make no other interpretation possible and no other outcome conceivable.

28 comments:

lockswriter said...

I think the people you're trying to reach here have different goals than you. The "not a dime's worth of difference" crowd aren't trying to make this country a better place, or stop it from becoming a worse one. They're trying to fight the Evil Empire. That's what they care about, full stop. They know it's a hopeless fight, but that just makes them feel more noble.

That's why they see your continued interest in the electoral fortunes of the Democrats as unprincipled moral turpitude, and their own willingness to join forces with libertarians as hard-headed political realism. To paraphrase Churchill, if we launched a drone strike on hell they'd at least make favorable references to the Devil on Twitter.

Anonymous said...

Yeah people are really claiming that Democrats in the Texas State House are equally to blame for passing this bill.

You've become a douchebag troll, a caricature of yourself lately.

mahakal said...

The LCGSF is a coalition of opposites to be sure, but on certain issues you can be sure there is agreement, like opposition to the continued federal prosecution of the war on cannabis, the national security state and insane rates of imprisonment in this country. We recognize that this country is being operated as a plantation for the rich and powerful. Obama is a better foreman than the alternatives were, but he's not in charge. Neither will the next president be in charge of anything but cheerleading for the same corporate espionage military industrial prison complex. America, fuck yeah.

There's no political solution to this, only social transformation will change things. And that means supporting people we might not always agree with politically when they do things that are socially beneficial, like Edward Snowden. Thanks to him we are having the social awareness of the situation raised worldwide. Because the change that has to come is beyond national boundaries, it is the people of the world who need to come together in a new way.

This entails replacing the debt money system, obtaining knowledge of free energy, and much more. But conservatives and defenders of the establishment will continue to act like this is all an impossibility.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

heck, I saw an ostensibly liberal guy on another site claiming that the Democrats would now take the opportunity to become EVEN MORE EVIL than the Republicans.

Obama being elected hasn't sent ONLY the rightwingers off the rails.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

good lord, that link to 'Free Energy' actually says that the Law of Conservation of Energy has been proven wrong, because solar panels create electricity from the sun.

As has been said, it's not even wrong.

Sheesh, and I thought there was a point to arguing with that guy.

Anonymous said...

That is one big fucking strawman you've erected. Almost time to burn it down, dontcha think?

Hamfast Ruddyneck said...

What Mahakal said...

EXCEPT for the free-energy pseudo-science.

Damn, dude, you're embarrassing us.

And WTF, Captcha? I had to refresh the damn thing twice before I got a number and a "word" which were both legible. :p

OBS said...

That "free energy" thing is so enlightening!

Sheesh. No wonder these people believe in the magic sparkle space unicorns that will save us all from the evil obots.

marindenver said...

Mahakal, you're doing a great job of showing us what an idiot you really are. Please proceed.

mahakal said...

Proceeding for the benefit of those who deny that ambient energy is all around us, and available for the use of anyone who hooks up a wheel work to the forces of nature, it does not matter whether conservation of energy exists in a closed system. We do not live in a closed system. The link I provided affords information for those who seek to use it. It is fine and expected to mock what you do not understand or wish to believe, but does not change the facts of nature. I really do not care for scientific "laws" which are only human inventions, and of which nature takes no notice whatsoever.

It would be counterproductive to go in depth in a comment, but energy can be obtained directly from water dipole separation using nothing more than sunlight to power the transmutation. Plants do this.

Mole said...

I will think dems are the better choice when it comes to who to support in an election.

But I can't blame people for falling into the fantasy of going third party. Even though I vote democratic in every election, I never voted that way because a dem convinced me they were right or was going to do anything useful, it was the process of elimination.

Though their ideology is false and sometimes dangerous, you get a sense they believe in their crazy talk. It's refreshing after disagreeing with republicans who are wrong most of the time. They don't think they will win, so they're free to say whatever they say with little consequences.

Dems who have a good chance to win won't be as free to talk. There are super representatives who will face down republicans, but those people seem to be rare.

People lean to third party because the only contrast to republicans seem to be a third party. And a lot of times, Dems in republicans states try to be a lesser republican. How many Dems agree with the texan bill, we just have faith that they don't.

Anonymous said...

"Yeah people are really claiming that Democrats in the Texas State House are equally to blame for passing this bill."

While I would never presume to speak for Driftglass, I'm fairly certain he's not saying that people are making that claim. I'd guess that he's saying that it is SO FUCKING OBVIOUS that the only ones who would/could pull this shit is are the Republicans, that the standard "both sides do it" claptrap is as absurd as always.

Or something.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

Now I am waiting for links to the conspiracies behind fluoridation and chemtrails.

Anonymous said...

I will be gracious and point out that solar is often called "free energy" because it basically falls out of the sky. Similar can be said about geothermal, wind, and tidal. Anyway, with solar, you don't burn fuel to get electricity. You put a plank thingy out in the sunlight and you get electricity. Electricity is not being created out of nothing. (Photons are carrying energy from the nuclear reaction of the sun, and when they hit an electron, it can be ionizing energy in the right circumstance, and electricity.) However, once the solar panel is created, you just hold it up in sunlight, and you don't add anything further to the system. You don't have to fuel the sun; it burns on its own.

Mike.K.

Anonymous said...

Nice link kal-el....

You really opened up the old trench coat there buddy....that can not be unseen.....

Not that the rest of your word walls contained anything readable either...

Please leave.

mahakal said...

I'll provide academic support for the position that the water dipole is the source of unlimited free energy transduced from the sun and ambient energy. Those who want to mock will mock, and continue to deny reality. Watch and learn something you might not know.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

I really do not care for scientific "laws" which are only human inventions, and of which nature takes no notice whatsoever.

Wow. If that's not a perfect summation of the Libertarian viewpoint, there isn't one.

Dude, there is no such thing as free energy, and the geocities claptrap you linked to doesn't make it so.

There are costs to producing energy and transporting it, to transforming it, and to using it. Some of those costs are losses, some are externalities. But nothing is free.

Even a solar panel. what are the costs to produce it? What are the costs to install it, link it to a work system, and what are the costs of storage for cloudy days? How do you get the energy to a power-producing system?

I don't mock you because this "free energy" is so beyond my capability to understand, although that has been your shtick on these comment threads for quite some time. I mock it because it is ludicrous, and your doubling down on it makes you look even more idiotic than normal.

The fact you don't realize that scientific laws are, in fact DERIVED from nature is merely the start of your ignorance.

Now tell me about the horrors of chemtrails.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

I will be gracious and point out that solar is often called "free energy" because it basically falls out of the sky. Similar can be said about geothermal, wind, and tidal.

It is true, in a narrow sense.

However, making use of all that energy is the tricky part. That's the part that isn't free. At some point you need to use it to drive motors or turbines or kitty toys or something, and all of that costs energy and money to do.

In my professional life, I have investigated, quite thoroughly I assure you, the use of things like geothermal and solar in building energy usage. Geothermal, while admittedly being far more cost efficient than standard methods of heating and cooling, still has costs to obtain the energy; the cost to install a system is much larger than a typical HVAC system, and the impact of widespread geothermal input into the ground temperature has not been thoroughly investigated.

As far as buildings go, there is a nearly free solar option; it is called passive solar heating, and when combined with passive cooling and/or a passive building envelope approach, can reduce heating and cooling costs to very little; most of the heat produced by residents and appliances is retained rather than wasted.

But even in those cases, there are costs for using those strategies, and the systems still require augmentation and control. Free energy, not completely free.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...



Proceeding for the benefit of those who deny that ambient energy is all around us,

Straw, nothing but straw. Even though 'ambient energy' is a vague, undefined term, nobody ever denied any such thing.

I might if there is ever an actual, functional definition of ambient energy that doesn't come off a Dr. Bronner's soap bottle.

DILUTE! DILUTE!

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

Proceeding for the benefit of those who deny that ambient energy is all around us,

Straw, nothing but straw. Even though 'ambient energy' is a vague, undefined term, nobody ever denied any such thing.

I might if there is ever an actual, functional definition of ambient energy that doesn't come off a Dr. Bronner's soap bottle.

DILUTE! DILUTE!

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

water dipole separation

Does it shock anyone that Googling this term turns up exactly no results that match it?

Now let's talk about cold fusion.

marindenver said...

Both sides do it and there is no difference between Dems and Rethugs. Oh wait. The Rethugs passed the Farm Bill after they freakin' stripped out
funding for food stamps. Didn't reduce it by $20B like they wanted,OK? Eliminated it. Don't believe me? http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/12/us/politics/house-bill-would-split-farm-and-food-stamp-programs.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&nl=us&emc=edit_cn_20130711

But, yeah, Dems, Rethugs, basically no difference.

Anonymous said...

Zombie,
Like I said, I was being generous. I think it's fair to say that sun or the tides or wind are "freely available" or "free", particularly compared to the cost of digging up coal or tar sands and everything related to that. You don't have to fuel the sun or work a gear or bellows to get the tides to "move". It's also not as if some country of religious fanatics, like Alabama, is the only place sunlight falls.

Mike.K.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

It's also not as if some country of religious fanatics, like Alabama, is the only place sunlight falls.

OK, that's a little bit harder to assert in Wisconsin in January.

Anonymous said...

Really anon because Stupak's amendment to Obamacare was Democratic and targeted women. But I guess that's too inconvenient.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Really anon


This is nearly impossible to parse because it is anon responding to anon, with no discerning clarifications like time or other specifics. Come on, Nonnie Mouse, when you are trying to talk to the people other than the ones in your head, a little more effort is necessary!

But, I figure it is a weird response to the first Nonnie @ 2:34. And like the Nonnie vs Nonnie action, it's meaningless and vapid, because it is referring to a failed amendment to the Natiaonal PPACA bill, neither of which apply to the heinous actions of the Texas State Legislature. WEIRD! I KNOW!

Anonymous said...

the more I read this the more pathetic driftglass looks. Just go through his archives and look at how he would eviscerate Bush for being a civil liberties destroying moron with a southern accent.

Obama does it... crickets.

Let's talk about David Brooks in language that would not be permitted in an R-rated movie and then complain when Greenwald isn't nice to a bunch of corporate shill journalists who couldn't give a rat's ass if Driftglass was put in jail for his constant obscenity.

The hypocrisy is just sad.

Also watch Driftglass make strawman arguments that puts in him league with people like LGF who PURPOSEFULLY misunderstand arguments against electing corporate Democrats.

you're a piece of shit driftglass, I'm done here: you can be satisfied that 'your time' to shine for the Democratic party came when Obama decided acting more like a Republican is better for the country than implementing policy people voted for him on.

Fuck you drifty, it's people like you who had your chance to make the world slightly better that people like me who are younger find it slightly worse.

driftglass said...

Farewell anonymous little buckaroo.

I hope you find what you are looking for.

Go with God.