My immediate reaction to the debate

I thought that weird JD Vance did better than I expected, even if almost his entire shtick consisted of three things: taking about himself and his family, blaming every possible problem on immigrants, and saying that we need to produce more energy.

Tim Walz is clearly not a good debater in that he sometimes spoke too fast and mixed up his words. He was at his best when he got passionate about a topic that he clearly cared about, such as child care, housing, health care, and reproductive rights.

All in all, it was a more even-tempered debate than the Harris-creepy Trump one.

There was no clear winner or loser.

Walz-Vance debate tonight

It starts at 9:00pm Eastern time.

It will feature a contrast between the affable geniality of Tim Walz and the smiling-but-not-really-pleased look of weird JD Vance.

I will be watching it and hope that Walz immediately attacks weird JD Vance by listing all the outrageous things he has said in the past, and thus keeps him on the back foot throughout the evening, trying to defend the indefensible.

The end goal of the anti-abortion movement

Some of the extremists in the anti-abortion movement in the US seeks as their goal the complete abolition of all abortions with no exceptions. They are also seeking to make medical abortions even harder by placing abortion pills under the list of controlled substances, making them much harder to obtain. But the end goal is not just the elimination of abortion. They are seeking much broader rollbacks on all manner of freedoms that have been gained in the last half-century.

In his concurring opinion in the 2022 case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that overthrew Roe v.Wade, Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas said that he wants the Supreme Court to revisit its other landmark decisions such as the right to use contraception (Griswold v. Connecticut 1965), the right to engage in homosexual acts (Lawrence v. Texas 2003), and same-sex marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges 2015). This is perfectly in line with what religious fundamentalists and evangelicals seem to really want, which is the prohibition of all sexual activity except between men and women within a marriage, and that too just for the purpose of procreation.
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