Rayvin

https://www.theguardian.com/football/who-scored-blog/2022/may/04/premier-league-signings-of-the-season-luis-diaz?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other The guardian ranks the best signings of the season. Bruno comes in at number 9 which is fine until you realise the garbage that they've put ahead of him. Has Coutinho done more than Bruno has?? Bellends.

I am very confused by that statement even at a general level. So she's saying that gay marriage is legal and people can do it if they want, but she doesn't agree with it. Ok. So what is the basis of its inclusion in her political platform? If she isn't campaigning against it, or raising awareness for some misguided fund, what has she even brought it up for? One assumes it's just virtue signalling for the right wing crazies.

Yes, I should add that it's not like the European versions are "right", it's just that they're less likely to shoot you for disagreeing Yeah the whole family thing is a deal for my mother too - she's actually very open minded on gay and trans rights and so on, and I don't actually think she does oppose marriage between anyone, but I've definitely heard her spout off about how it's a sacred bond between man and woman and the cornerstone of society. I'm anti-marriage full stop so I often get lectured on it.

This is particularly apparent in the US, where your average American Christian appears to be both hateful and psychotic. I feel like the European equivalents are less Hellfire and Brimstone. US Christianity seems very much focused on the old testament, whereas in Europe it's more about the new - but given that the most important, fundamental message that Jesus set out in the New Testament was "Love each other as you love yourselves" (honourable mention to "let he who is without sin cast the first stone"), you really do have to wonder how Evangelical America is squaring a lot of this away.

I think I've come to the source of this, by accident. Apparently they're willfully confusing abortion with euthanasia. Some poor child was born with serious birth defects and was judged by doctors and parents to have no decent standard of life possible - euthanasia was the preferred resolution, and the right have taken the opportunity to consider this a post-birth abortion. Which is sick, really.

Hmm. Granted on searching the rates now, they look basically identical with the England being better in 2020 and worse in 2019. I'm a bit confused what exactly I dug up the last time I searched for this but I can't find it anymore so whatever. Maybe the whole UK was changing the picture, but I can't find that now. At least it solves confusion I was having over it.

Well yes I'm really just saying that it's not like both sides are looking at this issue on the same points and disagreeing. One side fundamentally believes that we are killing children. No matter how misguided they are in this belief, it's a hard sell to argue with someone who genuinely does believe that this is what's happening, that it is a good thing to do. If you asked your average pro-life voter if, away from abortion, the government should get to control what women do with their bodies - I suspect that the answer would be a firm no. It's the specifics of this issue that allow for the muddying of the water. As tempting as it is to believe that they do this because they hate women or want to control them - and at the political level that's likely actually true, or at best they don't care about women and will trade them away for votes - if these people really do believe that abortion is killing babies, can we expect them to drop the issue? Would we, if that's what we believed. I mean this is a group of anti-intellectual science deniers. I really don't see how this debate ever goes away without a much better education system.

But they would likely argue, I suppose, that they're all about the right for what they consider to be an unborn child to live. And that opposing the government killing unborn babies is not inconsistent with opposing the government controlling guns. I don't think they will frame the issue as being about controlling women's bodies, even if that's how we see it.

I was looking at teenage pregnancy rates recently as part of a wider discussion I was having with someone on this, and oddly enough Florida has a lower incidence of the issue than the UK does. Even though abortion is free on the NHS here, far less stigmatised, and widely available. We had almost double the issue of Florida. Which does make me wonder a bit about what exactly is wrong in the UK for this to be such a common thing. Even my usual fallback of 'poverty' wouldn't really explain this well since you'd imagine Florida has plenty of it.

I raised this in the Biden thread but the central argument seems to be a legislative one? Or rather, the justifying argument seems to be. The Supreme Court isn't claiming that America should ban abortions, they're claiming that it was never a state level responsibility in the first place. Obviously the only reason it's happening is indeed because of the need to pander to the right wing bible belt, but the argument isn't on that premise.

Maybe so, but Trump appointed 3 right leaning supreme court judges - so his time in office continues to leave a dark legacy to this day. Granted, it would have been the same with any Republican leader - but it would not have happened under Clinton.

I have no idea how my mind even got to that. Obviously I meant crosshairs. Maybe it was autocorrect tbh, it could have been that I posted this from my phone So as I understand it, the legislative case for this being overturned is that it should never have been a state level decision in the first place because it doesn't sit comfortably under the remit of what the constitution currently stands for (and this is what state level rulings are supposed to cater to). I understand nowhere near enough of the American legal framework to give an opinion one way or the other on that, but I do wonder why the solution isn't then to go to the constitution and amend it in such a way that it does become a state level concern. The upshot will be that individual states will get to decide on the rules around this, likely returning America to a situation wherein women in some states have to travel to other states to have their needs met. It is a very regressive policy. I have also come to understand that the precedent of potentially overturning it has wide reaching ramifications for other laws, such as gay marriage and sex - which was legalised under an apparently similar framework to Roe vs Wade, and thus is vulnerable to the exact same reasoning being used to overturn this. The demographics for this are bizarre too. 60% of Americans believe things should remain as they are, including apparently a majority (slender) of the Republican party. Which leads you to wonder if perhaps we're seeing the same 35% of right wing nutjobs being catered to over there as we do here.

Roe vs Wade in the crossbars according to leaked supreme court draft. American twitter is beside itself. The US is just a mental country at times tbh.

This starts to feel like the issue is simply that we can't overhaul the whole squad overnight. They're not going to drop 500m in the summer to buy a whole new team. So ultimately, some of the "weaker" players will get new contracts for squad roles. That's fine IMO. Also Dummett isn't bad when fit.

Cowards, obviously.

I am fully on board for the first time we can say NUFC ladies had a higher turnout than SAFC men

Got to be happy for the retiring team captain who converted the first penalty, thus making sure she's managing a goal at St James before she goes out. Lovely stuff.

Amazing, thanks for sharing that. I must get up to the mountains again soon.

You also get the feeling that he thinks Newcastle is on similar levels of deprivation to Sunderland or Hartlepool. He's probably never been up this far. Also don't understand his point unless he imagines that the British government could have bought us and invested in the women's team. Patronising cunt. SA haven't invested a great deal into the region yet, although it'll come. The only difference so far is that we aren't owned by a penny pinching Southern fuck.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/may/01/newcastle-womens-katie-barker-fulfils-dream-after-breaking-new-ground

I actually have to confess that since the club has bothered to become a sporting institution after a decade and a half, I'm starting to be interested myself.

Any highlights?

I've not really been following this one so for me he could still be reading either "So Left it's Right - A Useful Idiot's Guide to Shooting Yourself in the Foot with your Principles" or "Freedumb: The Classical Liberal's Guide to 'Defending' your Civilisation by Discrediting its Intellectuals, Institutions, and Values."

What is your political alignment?

Well, Leeds it is then