Your argument is that Biden did not do stuff like this earlier does not hold water. This EO will be challenged in court and will likely be struck down by the radical judges on courts.

And keep in mind Biden issued an EO for student loan forgiveness earlier in his presidency. Republicans sued and got the republican SC to strike his efforts down-negatively impacting the lives of 10's of millions of Americans.

The problem is that in Biden's case, the statutory authority to issue EOs like Student Loan forgiveness is based on first following what prior conditions must be met before a President can exercise his authority. Sometimes that means studies, other times it means other ways of showing the conditions exist where the statute gave him the authority to act as he did.

To survive court challenges - without claiming executive omnipower like Trump does - one has to be able to show rightwing courts that you were only using the statutory powers Congress expressly empowered Departments with.

#10

And think about the sexual chemistry between Ritchson's Reacher and the character Rosamund Pike played if he were in the first movie. Ritchson playing oblivious of his affect on women would have given Pike far more space to enrich her character than she could with Cruise. Cruise just seemed like he couldn't be bothered without any of the sincere, self-effacing politeness Ritchson brought to the role.

And the final scenes would have played far more realistic. I can easily believe Ritchson could have defeated all the bad guys. With Cruise, it was an absolute stretch of the imagination.

The Big Lie metastasized into a sweeping, far-reaching conspiracy to first delegitimize and then overturn the results of the 2020 election. We often say the conspiracy culminated with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, but in truth it never ended so it's hard to say when it culminated or if it even has yet. If that sounds ominous, it should.

The Big Lie continued to evolve and now it serves a different set of purposes, first and foremost to keep Trump out of jail. There's a straight line from the Big Lie through Trump's decision to declare his candidacy early so that he could label any prosecution of him as "election interference" to the millions of dollars being raised from hapless marks to pay Trump's legal bills.

Cowed Republican elected officials continue to pay homage to the Big Lie. It cannot be disavowed without putting their political careers on the line. With the Big Lie now serving as a litmus test for RNC hires, Joyce Vance writes: "The corruption of the Republican Party is virtually complete ... This is about the un-democratization of the Republican Party and its conversion into a political tool whose job is to fuel the cult of personality."

So rather than seeing the Big Lie merely as a historical artifact, a ripe target of derision and ridicule, or a sign of cultishness, it's best seen as an ongoing threat to democracy and the rule of law with its denouement yet to be written.

Jack Reacher is awesome.

I feel the same way. As soon as I saw Ritchson in Season 1 I understood why the character's creator didn't like that Tom Cruise played the role in the two movies.

Ritchson damn near looks like the Hulk only with clothes on, while Cruise's physical presence - impressively fit for a 50/60 y.o. - wouldn't intimidate anyone just on first sight. If Ritchson's Reacher was after me and I had a gun, I'd just as soon shoot myself instead of him. Man he gets pissed when he's shot. ;^)

I believe it's fair to ask Alito to take America through his epiphany.

You know, I know, and the whole world knows that Alito, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and ACB all lied during their confirmation hearings when the subject of Roe being settled law and adherence to stare decisis came up. That is one of the myriad reasons the Dobbs ruling was so egregious. Nothing in the Dobbs case brought up new ground for the resultant ruling to firmly stand upon. Alito had to go back to the Middle Ages in trying to justify the ruling the entire anti-abortion movement has spent decades waiting to hear.

illegal immigrants aren't a tax problem

MF'n post of the year. Way to go JPW.

In January, lawmakers hammered out a kids-and-companies tax deal: Congress would extend a few business tax breaks that had recently expired in exchange for expanding the child tax credit. The bipartisan compromise turned out to be a very good bill, painstakingly negotiated by serious lawmakers from both chambers of Congress.

Among other virtues, the legislation would improve the living standards of 16 million low-income kids and lift 400,000 children out of poverty in its first year. It would increase incentives for research and development. And the icing on the cake: The whole thing would be paid for by curbing a pandemic-era tax break that has produced an avalanche of fraudulent claims.

Today, Republican senators are trying to kill the legislation, with some of its GOP supporters saying it's on "life support."

Mike Crapo (Idaho), the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, complained that the child tax credit measures might discourage parents from working, even though the bill has an explicit earnings requirement (i.e., it is available only if families work).

He and his Senate colleague Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) have also complained about the bill's cost. They have both said they don't want to set a precedent of paying for tax cuts, since congressional Republicans have a multi-decade-long record of not doing so. As Tillis said in a committee hearing, "We have to have a discussion about whether or not we're setting a precedent on future tax provisions having a pay-for. We have not normally done that, but we've done that in this bill." He then explained that when it came time to extend the expiring provisions of the Trump tax cuts next year, he was worried Democrats might demand they be paid for (heaven forbid).

As a reminder, the pay-for in this bill is the elimination of a fraud-riddled pandemic program, whose continuation would waste tens of billions of dollars. Usually, ending a program like this is something Republicans would cheer. But not, apparently, if it threatens their ability to add to the debt in the future.

And now these clowns stand against impactful bipartisan policy that will help millions of American children living at the margin of our society. Nope, we won't help the children because it might help Biden get reelected and it sets a terrible precedent of paying for the tax cuts we demand to help our chief constituencies and donors.

Thoughts and prayers kiddos. Nothing can be done.

I don't want to play the 'chase a link game' today. So, you are free to go on believing that Iran has been only 1 month from having a nuke since 2014.

That's what the critics of the 2015 accord have been claiming since, well pretty much forever - which is the complete opposite of the IAEA documented with their personnel on the ground in Iran and the cameras they used to have trained on key Iranian enrichment facilities 24 hour a day until Trump caused them to be turned off.

You just can't measure the stupidity and ignorance of Clodio and Robotson, two peas in the same pod of disinformation and their nonexistent universe of alternative facts and imaginary observations.

The person performing the abortion need not even be a doctor. The truth is, there is nothing preventing someone like Kermit Gosnel from legally setting up shop there, because there is no criminal code pertaining to abortion any longer.

It's appropriate that on a thread about lying about abortion that you chime in lying about New York's abortion laws.

First, read this article, it's free and quite enlightening no matter where you fall on the abortion/IVF issues. To paraphrase his overarching point, he feels to truly be a 'pro-life' supporter one has to believe that life begins at the moment of conception. So both the Alabama ruling about IVF and the Arizona ruling reinstating an 1864 law should find full-throated agreement by everyone claiming to be pro-life. However, that isn't what Trump nor others in the supposed pro-life camps have done. They've all staked new positions far more progressive than supporting the court approved anti-abortion laws.

This is nothing new. But what is new is his willingness to introspectively criticize those of his own ilk for showing that the moment anti-abortion laws might impact individuals they sympathize with, shift to positions which still allow for fetuses to be discriminately terminated. He says he and other true believers are seething at both those they thought were allies and those they already sensed were using the abortion issue to gain political power and demonize groups and people that they didn't like.

On some very salient and revelatory points, he ain't wrong.

When the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that I.V.F. embryos were subject to the state's wrongful death statute, it forced the pro-life movement to fully examine the cultural and political implications of its position on unborn children, and pro-life Republicans blinked. They caved, almost instantly, on a core philosophical element of the movement - the incalculable value of every human life no matter how small - and the movement is now standing by or even applauding as Trump is turning the Republican Party into a pro-choice party, one more moderate than the Democrats, but pro-choice still.

While I always respected arguments about the personhood of the baby, I was often frustrated when critics would attribute malign motives to pro-life Americans. But now I'm left wondering how much of the movement was truly real. How much was it really about protecting all human life? And were millions of ostensibly pro-life Americans happy with pro-life laws, only so long as they targeted "them" and imposed no burden at all on "us"?

Philosophically, the movement is breaking. There is no coherent pro-life argument for why a state should prevent women who become pregnant through natural means from destroying an embryo while protecting the ability of families who create an embryo through I.V.F. to either destroy it or keep it frozen indefinitely.

[I]t is probably no coincidence that public support for the pro-life position began a sharp decline after Trump's election. It's hard to argue you're a movement rooted in love when you enthusiastically unite behind a fundamentally hateful man. On Wednesday, Trump reversed his previous position supporting a 20-week ban on abortion; he announced that he would not support a national abortion ban if he wins the presidency, and he said the policy should instead be left up to the states.

Trump's advice to voters was to "follow your heart" and "do what's right for your family, and do what's right for yourself." It's "all about the will of the people," he said. This is the most pro-choice position a Republican presidential candidate has taken since at least Gerald Ford.

I also recognize that many of the critics of the pro-life movement were right all along. When push came to shove, the pro-life position was either secondary to other values or it genuinely was punitively tribal - enthusiastically aimed straight at the supposedly licentious left but ready to be abandoned the instant the commitment to unborn children might endanger the larger MAGA political project. Abortion is the poison pill that Trump doesn't want to swallow.

The older I get, the more I'm convinced that we simply don't know who we are - or what we truly believe - until our values carry a cost. For more than 40 years, the Republican Party has made the case that life begins at conception. Alabama's Supreme Court agreed. Yet the Republican Party can't live with its own philosophy. There is no truly pro-life party in the United States.

Damn Rcade, I posted it a full 10 minutes prior... Sigh.

No you didn't. You've been around here long enough to know that threads moved to the front page carry the timestamp of when they were moved, NOT when they were originally posted on the back page.

Look at the timestamp of post #1: 10:40 AM.

You posted your thread at 11:39 AM, which means you posted a full hour after QCP.

When in fact what happened is TonyRoma posted a thread about how and why Deplorables keep bringing it up.

Correct. And more importantly, why is the former Republican President and current presidential nominee - along with multiple elected Republicans - repeating this lie over and over again?

I truly don't see how so many people choose to ignore lie after lie from Republicans on a myriad of issues - and I'm not referring to the usual political or policy differences. I'm referring to only lies that can be documented as such by any rudimentary search of the substantiated facts and evidence proving them so.

And one more aspect of the anti-abortion faction's penchant for negative framing.

Republican legislators really think it's bad when a woman gets to choose if she would rather have kid or have an abortion.

In most circumstances the decision whether or not to have an abortion is a medical decision based upon health concerns regarding either the mother, child, or both, influencing whether the fetus should be brought to full term in conjunction with the counsel of the very doctors trying to provide the prenatal care required to birth a healthy baby.

This is nowhere near any realm of advocating selective "abortion up to the moment of birth" or "infantricide" as Republican politicans wrongly and proudly exclaim, simply to inflame the emotions of those that they're lying to.

On topic:

Republicans want more babies, pass draconian laws, get less babies.

This is so true. I have a retired nurse friend whose daughter recently got married. All involved live in Missouri. The daughter would like to get pregnant but is fearful for what might happen should she have complications or a natural miscarriage.

Illegalizing healthcare options is absolutely having a chilling effect on millions of women now reading horror stories about wanted pregnancies turned into nightmares due to states placing themselves between expectant woman, their doctors, and the ability to receive timely and necessary medical services should the need arise.

It's still up on X.

Don't forget, Trump and his acolytes "love" the poorly educated. Lake is just virtue signalling to the tribe.

I think abortion needs to be legal in the first trimester.

Good for you. Then don't have one yourself after 6 weeks of your pregnancy. I'm 100% in your corner in allowing you to make that decision without any input from me or any other American.

Too bad you don't understand everyone should be allowed to make their own decision about it just like you did.

In this country limitless abortion is an extreme position.

As it's been proven to you again and again, actual late term abortions RARELY happen and in almost every instance they occur because people who WANT THEIR BABY find out that the baby cannot survive birth or ex vitro, or the mother cannot survive the physical rigors or difficulties of the specific birth for which abortion is being considered.

These decisions should be left up to doctors and the families involved PERIOD. The state has no business in legislating who can or cannot receive the medical care that they desire. There should never be a legal impediment nor sanction against anyone's choice regarding the health and well being of their own body.

Bingo.

What allies of Donald Trump claim happened was, in reality, a response to that Russian effort. Federal officials (the "national security state," if you prefer) discovered signs that Russia sought to influence the results and began investigating - including various points of contact between Russian actors and Trump's campaign.

Trump, eager to reinforce that he had won the presidency thanks to his excellence and not foreign help, immediately cast this probe as an effort to subvert him and his administration. He and his allies worked feverishly to offset new developments in the investigation with a narrative about nefarious "deep state" actors desperate to hobble him. This line of argument was investigated by the inspector general for the Justice Department and by a special counsel specifically tasked with proving that Trump was unfairly probed; in neither case was that idea substantiated.

That experience from 2016, though, helped national security officials develop a plan to prevent similar interference efforts in 2020.

In October 2020, there was suddenly another information dump: The New York Post (after Fox News passed) used information purportedly obtained from a laptop owned by Joe Biden's son Hunter to obliquely allege wrongdoing by the Democratic candidate. Social media companies briefly limited access to the story out of concern that it was another influence effort, but they soon reversed those limits.

For Trump allies and sympathizers, the narrative is generally that the feds tried to silence the laptop story, another example of the "national security state" meddling in an election. But there is no evidence that federal actors tried to muffle the story. Instead, social media executives have testified that their motivation was to "avoid repeating the mistakes of 2016" - giving oxygen to a foreign interference effort.

The information was sourced back to Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, who had been actively involved in trying to dig up dirt on Joe Biden - including some offered by foreign actors - for more than a year. One of Giuliani's partners in that effort had been sanctioned as a Russian agent the previous month. A Time article published soon after the laptop story broke reported that information allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden was being offered for sale in Europe in 2019.

Regardless of its backstory, it was the laptop that was the effort to upend the election, not the response. The direct effort to affect the outcome of the race was not a function of what the federal government was doing; it was, instead, a function of what Giuliani was doing on behalf of his boss.

It doesn't get more insidious than those who've been shown the truth and presented with incontrovertible receipts continue to baselessly blame law enforcement and counterintelligence officials of this nation - adding false credence to our enemy's corrosive disinformation campaign. Those who continue down this path should be highlighted and spurned for the anti-America animus of their deceit, always trying to blame those responding to the false attacks and absolving the perpetrators by shamefully and continually shifting the blame.

Oddly enough, religious arguments convince me the least. If there is God and a soul, heaven and all that - it doesn't even matter does it?

Even more oddly, we consider a heartbeating body without brain activity to be "dead" and allow that person's proxy to end any artificial life support, knowing that the body will expire.

I wonder why measurable in vitro brain activity isn't the red-line deliniation where an embryonic clump of dividing cells actually displays signs of probable life.

But more importantly is the fact that in death we admit that the physical body is simply a vessel for consciousness/interactive life/soul. Does destroying the vessel destroy the soul? No one believes that, and in that immutable truth may lie the reason the Christian bible does not contain a single reference to life beginning at conception nor deeming human intervention in terminating an in vitro embryo as an act of murder as determined by the Fifth Commandment.

My Roman Catholic orthodoxy taught me that souls are infinite and that the death of the body is not the death of the soul. If that is one's belief, then how does that square with abortion being the cessation of "life" when the body itself is not physically connected to the eternal soul?

Is it your position that the US needs to be less like Europe?

My position is one of common ------- sense, something you show little of when pimping your little VAT love.

European countries don't have minimum wages last raised when W was President. European countries don't have their governments controlled by monied elites who game their taxation systems to benefit the wealthiest citizens because their highest Court considers spending money to affect societal change is equivalent to "free speech." The US taxpayers already subsidize employers by acting as social backstops for companies always claiming that the cost of labor is too high while pocketing tax break after tax break and subsidy after subsidy.

Newsflash: Poor people pay taxes too, so even they are invisibly impacted by our imbalanced system.

And the biggest difference? Europeans have taken health insurance off the plates of business and placed it into the perview of government. American workers already struggle just to afford health insurance costs that Europeans workers don't.

The impediment to any US VAT lies with the reality that we don't have socialized health insurance removing the trillions of non-productive dollars sucked up by middlemen that don't deliver a single tangible benefit to healthcare delivery nor service provision.