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ProfessorPlum

ProfessorPlum's Journal
ProfessorPlum's Journal
June 28, 2023

did this latest SC decision kill the movement to make the Electoral College obsolete?

I support the movement to create a popular vote for president via having states representing the required number of EC votes pledge their electors to the winner of the national popular vote.

However, the mechanism - having states assign their electors not based on how their vote tallies come out but rather on some other basis - sounds very much like the schemes that were voted down this week. Where Republican-run states could just assign their electors arbitrarily.

Does this effectively kill the plan to end (the relevance of) the Electoral College?

February 19, 2023

It Is Journalism's Sacred Duty To Endanger The Lives Of As Many Trans People As Possible

https://www.theonion.com/it-is-journalism-s-sacred-duty-to-endanger-the-lives-of-1850126997

“Quentin” is a 14-year-old assigned female at birth who now identifies as male against the wishes of his parents. His transition was supported by one of his unmarried teachers, who is not a virgin. He stole his parents’ car and drove to the hospital, where a doctor immediately began performing top surgery on him. Afterward, driving home drunk from the hospital, Quentin became suicidally depressed, and he wonders now, homeless and ridden with gonorrhea, if transitioning was a mistake.

We just made Quentin up, and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean stories like his aren’t potentially happening everywhere, constantly. Good journalism is about finding those stories, even when they don’t exist. It’s about asking the tough questions and ignoring the answers you don’t like, then offering misleading evidence in service of preordained editorial conclusions. In our case, endangering trans people is the lodestar that shapes our coverage. Frankly, if our work isn’t putting trans people further at risk of trauma and violence, we consider it a failure.

We stand behind our recent obsessed-seeming torrent of articles and essays on trans people, which we believe faithfully depicts their lived experiences as weird and gross. We remain dedicated to finding the angles that best frame the basic rights of the gender-nonconforming as up for debate, and we will use these same angles over and over again in hopes that this repetition makes them suffer. As journalists, it is our obligation to entertain any and all pseudoscience that gives bigotry an intellectual veneer. We must be diligent in laundering our vitriol through the posture of journalistic inquiry, and we must be allowed to fixate on the genitals.


The Onion writes what the NYT should have.
February 2, 2023

Trump just declared war on trans people

fuck that seditious, criminal asshole.

edit: link to his horrible speech.

September 15, 2022

The extremely wealthy are planning to transcend humanity

using their vast wealth accumulation as both the cause of future crises and the means of "escape".

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff

Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system, and asked: “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?” The event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, solar storm, unstoppable virus, or malicious computer hack that takes everything down.

This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from raiders as well as angry mobs. One had already secured a dozen Navy Seals to make their way to his compound if he gave them the right cue. But how would he pay the guards once even his crypto was worthless? What would stop the guards from eventually choosing their own leader?

The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers – if that technology could be developed “in time”.


emphasis mine
September 9, 2022

Roe v. Wade WAS the compromise decision. It protects a fetus in the 3rd trimester

except in cases of the health or life of the mother. The right wing fascists keep lying to say that progressives want abortion right up to birth, but that was never the situation in the US after Roe. They keep implying that we have to compromise and give up free abortions in the 3rd trimester - but that was never even on the table.

So happy to see women and men voters all over the country dealing out appropriate punishment to these religious prigs for denying bodily autonomy for women.

September 9, 2022

I'll be amazed if this country can't protect itself and prosecute a blatant criminal

TFG keeps admitting to crimes. In public. That would have anyone else in chains for decades. Can we really not put a stop to this one man crime spree?

June 11, 2022

allowing morons, children, hate-filled goons, and the propagandized to carry weapons of war

actually decreases everyone's freedoms. It means we all have to worry about being in public. When will the next NRA-fest be? Which innocents will be slaughtered? How can we make schools prisons - take away their freedom to be in an open, light-filled, liberating environment and replace them with windowless, booby-trapped, cement cells?

Why can't we win this argument (or at least make the argument) on the basis of maximizing everyone else's freedom not to be gunned down - or worry about ourselves or our loved ones or innocent friends that we haven't met yet - being gunned down?

June 6, 2022

Old DU favorite Alan Grayson is running to unseat Marco Rubio!

Some of you may remember Grayson for actually having the guts to call out Republican inhumanity for what it is. He famously outlined the GOP healthcare plan as "Don't get sick. If you do get sick, die quickly."

He has lost some primary and general races in the years in between. And I remember there being allegations of domestic abuse during a divorce.

But he's exactly the kind of person I would love to see in the Senate, calling out Reptilian Bullshit.

See this wikipedia entry for the list of candidates in his race

October 28, 2021

so, do I have this right? The corporations win again, and rub our noses in it

They broke the Democratic agenda into two parts, one that corporations liked better, and one that the citizens liked better, with the promise that both parts had to pass, together.

Then, because corporations have to always win and never lose, and citizens have to always lose and never win, we pared the citizen's bill down to almost nothing.

And now, we will pass the corporations' bill nearly unchanged, plus the husk of the citizens' bill.

Just making sure that I'm perceiving this correctly, and that corporate America wins again and disciplines us citizens to expect nothing from government.

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