Last Call For A Premature Autopsy, Con't

The latest CBS News poll on the end of Roe finds substantial support for keeping the decision in place, support from nearly two-thirds of Americans. The remaining third wants a national ban on the procedure and to imprison women and doctors. 

There's no middle ground.

 

The nearly two-thirds of Americans who want Roe v. Wade kept in place say they feel angry and discouraged about the prospect that it may be overturned, describing that as "a danger to women" and as a threat to rights more generally. Most Americans, and particularly younger women, think it would also lead to restrictions on birth control and family planning choices. Going forward, most would like to see a federal law passed that protects abortion and in their own states, two-thirds want it to be legal, at least in most cases.

For the one-third who do want Roe overturned, they'd describe it as "a protection for the unborn" and call it a victory for the anti-abortion rights movement Most of them would like to see a national ban on abortions now. The minority who now want abortions illegal in their states also think those providing any illegal abortions and the women who have them should be subject to criminal punishment or penalties.

A majority, 58%, would also like Congress to pass a federal law making abortion legal nationwide.

That's especially true among those who want Roe kept in place, 82% of who overwhelmingly want a federal law.

In fact, in reaction to the news of Roe's possible overturning, the percentage who say abortion should be generally available has now increased a bit, to its highest level.

 

In other words, the two-thirds of America that wants to keep Roe want a federal law on abortion (58%), and the third that opposes Roe wan a federal law banning abortion (57%).  

And again, two-thirds of Americans want their own states to allow abortions in all (33%) or most (32%) cases.

Only 12% want a total ban on abortion in their state.

This should be a dealbreaker for the GOP, but as with Trump's racism, we know white voters will side with the GOP again and again because they believe their families won't be really punished for abortion, only "those people" will be.

Looking at the crosstabs details of the poll, 61% of white voters want to keep Roe as it is, with 56% of white non-college voters agreeing with that. 61% of white voters also want to keep abortion legal in their own state if Roe is overturned, with 55% of non-college white voters agreeing.

But again, only 33% of Trump voters want abortion to be legal in all (11%) or most (22%) cases, with 20% wanting a total ban.

Understand this is a spectacular loser for Republicans politically, but only if voters decide to make them pay the price.

The Big Lie, Big Screen Edition

Trump propagandist Dinesh D'Souza is back with his latest "film", the subject this time being Trumpist fan fiction about how "Democrats stole the election" through illegally "stuffing ballot drop boxes" and his "proof" is just as shoddy as his premise.

 

“Ballot harvesting” is a pejorative term for dropping off completed ballots for people besides yourself. The practice is legal in several states but largely illegal in the states True the Vote focused on, with some exceptions for family, household members and people with disabilities.

True the Vote has said it found some 2,000 ballot harvesters by purchasing $2 million worth of anonymized cellphone geolocation data — the “pings” that track a person’s location based on app activity — in various swing counties across five states. Then, by drawing a virtual boundary around a county’s ballot drop boxes and various unnamed nonprofits, it identified cellphones that repeatedly went near both ahead of the 2020 election.

If a cellphone went near a drop box more than 10 times and a nonprofit more than five times from Oct. 1 to Election Day, True the Vote assumed its owner was a “mule” — its name for someone engaged in an illegal ballot collection scheme in cahoots with a nonprofit.

The group’s claims of a paid ballot harvesting scheme are supported in the film only by one unidentified whistleblower said to be from San Luis, Arizona, who said she saw people picking up what she “assumed” to be payments for ballot collection. The film contains no evidence of such payments in other states in 2020.

Plus, experts say cellphone location data, even at its most advanced, can only reliably track a smartphone within a few meters — not close enough to know whether someone actually dropped off a ballot or just walked or drove nearby.

“You could use cellular evidence to say this person was in that area, but to say they were at the ballot box, you’re stretching it a lot,” said Aaron Striegel, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Notre Dame. “There’s always a pretty healthy amount of uncertainty that comes with this.”

What’s more, ballot drop boxes are often intentionally placed in busy areas, such as college campuses, libraries, government buildings and apartment complexes — increasing the likelihood that innocent citizens got caught in the group’s dragnet, Striegel said.

Similarly, there are plenty of legitimate reasons why someone might be visiting both a nonprofit’s office and one of those busy areas. Delivery drivers, postal workers, cab drivers, poll workers and elected officials all have legitimate reasons to cross paths with numerous drop boxes or nonprofits in a given day.

True the Vote has said it filtered out people whose “pattern of life” before the election season included frequenting nonprofit and drop box locations. But that strategy wouldn’t filter out election workers who spend more time at drop boxes during the election season, cab drivers whose daily paths don’t follow a pattern, or people whose routines recently changed.

In some states, in an attempt to bolster its claims, True the Vote also highlighted drop box surveillance footage that showed voters depositing multiple ballots into the boxes. However, there was no way to tell whether those voters were the same people as the ones whose cellphones were anonymously tracked.

A video of a voter dropping off a stack of ballots at a drop box is not itself proof of any wrongdoing, since most states have legal exceptions that let people drop off ballots on behalf of family members and household members.

For example, Larry Campbell, a voter in Michigan who was not featured in the film, told The Associated Press he legally dropped off six ballots in a local drop box in 2020 — one for himself, his wife, and his four adult children. And in Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office investigated one of the surveillance videos circulated by True the Vote and said it found the man was dropping off ballots for himself and his family.

 

And of course the follow-up is that the information about people whose cell phones were being tracked will be given to law enforcement to "investigate" these obscene claims, if they haven't been already. I haven't hard of anyone actually being arrested for, you know, voting...other than Republican megadonors who deliberately tried to commit mass voter fraud or GOP voters who tried to do it on a smaller scale in state after state after state.

You won't see any of those folks in D'Souza's "film".

It's all 100% lies and they know it.

Unions From A To Z, Con't

Last month, workers at an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island scored a major victory by unionizing, the first such union in the company's history. This month, Amazon fired and replaced nearly all of the senior managers at the warehouse for "performance reasons".

On Thursday, Amazon informed more than half a dozen senior managers involved with the Staten Island warehouse that they were being fired, said four current and former employees with knowledge of the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.

The firings, which occurred outside the company’s typical employee review cycle, were seen by the managers and other people who work at the facility as a response to the victory by the Amazon Labor Union, three of the people said. Workers at the warehouse voted by a wide margin to form the first union at the company in the United States, in one of the biggest victories for organized labor in at least a generation.

Word of the shake-up spread through the warehouse on Thursday. Many of the managers had been responsible for carrying out the company’s response to the unionization effort. Several were veterans of the company, with more than six years of experience, according to their LinkedIn profiles.

Workers who supported the union complained that the company’s health and safety protocols were too lax, particularly as they related to Covid-19 and repetitive strain injuries, and that the company pushed them too hard to meet performance targets, often at the expense of sufficient breaks. Many also said pay at the warehouse, which starts at over $18 per hour for full-time workers, was too low to live on in New York City.

An Amazon spokeswoman said the company had made the management changes after spending several weeks evaluating aspects of the “operations and leadership” at JFK8, which is the company’s name for the warehouse. “Part of our culture at Amazon is to continually improve, and we believe it’s important to take time to review whether or not we’re doing the best we could be for our team,” said Kelly Nantel, the spokeswoman.

The managers were told they were being fired as part of an “organizational change,” two people said. One of the people said some of the managers were strong performers who recently received positive reviews.

The Staten Island facility is Amazon’s only fulfillment center in New York City, and for a year current and former workers at the facility organized to form an upstart, independent union.

The company is challenging the election, saying that the union’s unconventional tactics were coercive and that the National Labor Relations Board was biased in the union’s favor. And the union is working to maintain the pressure on Amazon so it will negotiate a contract.

 

The managers had one real job, to keep the warehouse running without unionizing. They failed, and Amazon shitcanned them. The replacements will then have the job of crushing the union to make a nationwide example of them.

 

The NLRB still has to play by the rules. Amazon does not. Keep that in mind.  It's all about greed and exploitation and this union has to die or companies like Amazon may actually have to take care of their workers, and they'll never do that unless forced to, kicking and screaming by multiple union chapters and their combined power.

Amazon will do everything to destroy this union in the months ahead.  Watch.