https://www.joemygod.com/2024/01/appeals-court-texas-can-ban-emergency-abortions/
Best Wishes and Hugs,
Scottie
Appeals Court: Texas Can Ban Emergency Abortions – Joe.My.God.
https://www.joemygod.com/2024/01/appeals-court-texas-can-ban-emergency-abortions/
Best Wishes and Hugs,
Scottie
Scottie's Playtime 
America is becoming more dangerous at almost every court decision.
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Yep, the Republicans have been very, very busy for over 2 decades, formulating a court system that will do these very things. And more.
If I was Mitch McConnell, I wouldn’t be able to stand what I’d be seeing when I closed my eyes at night, after doing the work he’s done. I suppose it either says a great deal about how corrupt and corroded he is, or else that would be why he keeps having brain freezes-no sleep.
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Hello Barry. Oh yes, and it is not lost on both Ron and I. Ron keeps insisting we get new passports, but with our income it is not something easily done. The US medical system seems to take every advance in income we can make. If that doesn’t do it, the price gouging profit is king of the food companies takes the rest. But I wonder what countries will take the LGBTQIA + females in as refuges? For us, we are older, my husband is 68 I am 61 and both of us have medical issues. Would your country do so? Open their borders to poor older gay men with health issues? Most won’t. They want young or wealthy immigrants. So, as the bad guy got told in the last star fighter movie … “now we die”. Best Wishes. Scottie
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LGBTQIA+ status is irrelevant to immigration here, but, and it’s an enormous but, health is an issue. Successive government’s have dragged their heels on liberalising health requirements for immigration. As we have a publicly funded system the authorities calculate the potential health costs against tax revenue the immigrant might provide. If the potential taxes is less than the predicted health costs, then for all practical purposes it’s impossible to get a resident’s visa. It’s cruel, harsh and unreasonable and humanitarian needs are not taken into account. This harsh rule even applies to refugees, apparently without exception.
Such rules need to made more humane, but with the current swing to the right, I don’t see that happening any time soon. Our new government comprising of three parties – one centre right, one libertarian, and one populist, seems hell bent on winding back many social reforms we’ve seen over recent decades. I’m hoping that the coalition falls apart rather than last the full 3 year term or they upset so many middle and lower income voters that they get tossed out in 2026.
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Hi Barry. I apologize for the sign-off I used in my reply. I must have been exhausted. When I get done replying here, I will edit it. I never want anyone here to feel I don’t listen to them.
As you say, the right in your country seems to be doing what the right in our country is hell-bent on, rolling back all progress made in the last 80 years on civil rights and social acceptance.
I have heard that there is a group of very wealthy billionaires that are behind a worldwide push to promote and establish right wing anti-immigrant ideology worldwide. Remember when a US billionaire paid for Steve Bannon to go over to Europe and try to start a right wing anti-emigrant hate academy in an old castle? The country finally got tired of his group’s crap and tossed them out, but he had already infected a bunch of new recruits with their right wing hatred.
Seems to me, and I could be wrong, but these people waited for decades building their forces and positions of power. Then they sprang out and got a bunch of school board seats and other places that they could then really put the screws to the people they hate. They are being removed here in the US when new elections are held, but the damage has been done. Plus, main stream media tried to give them a lot of air time so their message went viral. Best wishes. Scottie
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You’re one of the few people who really listen, and I really appreciate that. So I fully understand that the slip up was not intentional. In fact given all that’s going on in your life, I’m surprised you haven’t slipped up more often. Even my own sister forgets about half the time, although the moment she feels me tense up she realises and releases me. She’s an instinctive hugger and it comes so naturally to her that she doesn’t always realise she’s doing it. So please don’t feel bad about it.
The very wealthy are pushing a right wing regressive agenda although in this country they seem to want even more immigrants, not less. We rely almost entirely on immigration for growth – nearly one in three New Zealanders are immigrants, as are my wife and daughter-in-law. More immigrants eases the labour shortage meaning lower wages and less power to the workers, which of course means they are more open to exploitation.
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Hi Barry. Thank you for being so understanding. For a long time in my life, I hated being touched by people I either did not know or touch I did not agree to. In fact, I reacted so badly to causal hugs on first meeting someone that as an 18 year old it kept me from being taken by a sex trafficking ring for male prostitutes. I was taken there by a new date I met, I did not know who they were or what they were doing, but when the males there in charge tried to hug me and put their arms around me I got very upset and angry, pushing them away. Only later as I got older did I realize what was happening and how very lucky I was.
After years of dealing with my abuse issues I started to really enjoy hugs, both non-sexual which is what with most people are, to the hugs between Ron and me. I started to realize what the word and action meant to me. It was something I never got growing up. Any touch by family came with a price. I think you can understand the price I was required to pay. Either submission or pain, but never an affirmation of love or care. So now I offer them online to people as a sign I see them and I respect them, that I care about them. And those that know me in real life that wish to I get hugs from.
But by that same measure if that same idea / feeling / touch causes others to feel what I felt before I got to where I enjoy the warm hugs from people I surely understand, and won’t want to do that to them. I never want to cause the harm and bad feelings that I felt for so long. See Barry, I really do care about people.
As to immigrants, there are many positives to them, far more than the made up pretend reasons to vilify them in the US. As in your country, we depend on them for two sectors of the work force. The hard work of farm labor such as picking vegetables which is horribly hard, hot, and unpleasant. US workers just won’t do it, even when offered high wages to do so. Also the employers looking to pay the very least for unpleasant jobs most US workers won’t take such as meat processing / packaging plants. These places have been caught hiring migrant kids as young as 13 teen for dangerous jobs, always at night. Also they hire undocumented workers who don’t dare complain as they will be deported. Often these workers are also sexually abused as well a physically working hard disgusting jobs at low pay.
Barry to me the entire idea of lesser people is weird and not true. Just because some people live there and not here doesn’t make them unworthy, less than human, or bad. We are born where we are, we don’t choose it. Plus in the US it is racism and bigotry at play, the right wing bigots want to stop anyone coming over the Southern Border because they are brown with possibly a different culture. But at the same time they ignore the Northern Border and the people on visas who simply stay without going home. tRump told his staff and on TV that the US needed to attract more white European preferably Nordic people to immigrate even as they were sealing off the Southern Border and stopping all asylum claims. It is entirely racism and white supremacy. Best Wishes. Scottie
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Totally OT link, but we’ve discussed Rufo here more than once, and I received this piece today. I thought you might like to have it, Scottie. I’ve almost shut down my Substack due to the site’s welcome of and monetizing Nazis, but the Handbasket is a leader of the resistance, so I receive from her and from another writer to whom I have a paid subscription with no other access. Anyway, here is the link:
https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/you-need-to-know-chris-rufos-name
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Hi Ali. Thank you for the link. I am glad I got the chance to see it, I was about to delete all old tabs I had not gotten to yet. But yes, this is the way the Republican Party and the right works now. They are sharks looking for the scent of blood. They attack the prey in gangs and in mass, like wolves on a moose or coyotes on smaller prey. Furthermore, they rally their followers with fake outrage stories to get them to scare any who don’t follow their party line so much they quit, they leave the media. This is tactics right out of the Brownshirts and Nazi Hitler playbook. It is very frightening the way they can lie and use the right wing propaganda machine to totally ruin anyone who doesn’t support their ideology. Again thanks for the link, please also add your voice spreading the news of how anti-democracy and totally vicious for power these people are. Hugs. Scottie
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