cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/54506028
cross-posted from: https://quokk.au/c/politics/p/1270828/iowa-dem-josh-turek-releases-anti-trans-ad-calling-for-a-federal-funding-ban-on-trans-care
On Saturday, Oct. 24, Josh Turek, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Iowa, released a new ad targeting transgender people—perhaps the worst anti-transgender ad of the entire election cycle to come from a Democrat. The ad begins with Turek talking about his disability and the importance of not discriminating, before immediately turning to adopt discriminatory policies toward transgender people. One such policy is a sports ban, a position sadly becoming increasingly common among high-profile Democrats in competitive races, and one that alone would have made this yet another newsworthy anti-trans ad. But Turek then goes further, advocating for a new policy: a proposal to ban federally funded gender-affirming care in the United States, one that would impact a substantial number of transgender people and make their care difficult to impossible to receive.
Why? If anyone needs it, it’s him.
Keep this treasonous weasel out of office at any cost.
Something, something how Democratic centrists aren’t Republican-lite.
Fucking be better you shitty Democrats and stop making excuses for complete moral failings on being “the best we can do” in a asshole red state and abandoning your core voters for some Iowa Republican or “Independent” vote that, let’s be honest, never going to vote for a Democrat in any way to begin with.
One of their campaign ads is look how much I vote with Republicans
https://turek4iowa.com/news/new-josh-turek-for-iowa-releases-new-ad-prove-it/
“In the Senate, Josh will work with anyone to clean up corruption and secure the border, including President Trump,” the narrator says in the ad. “And he’s got 700 votes to prove it.”
So they’re running as what dems want to be and blue maga keep trying to say they aren’t
Imagine trans rights being the thing you chose to chicken out of in an attempt to get undecided voters.
It unfortunately says a lot about the voters 😕
Well it says a lot about his opinion of voters anyway.
Do you think there’s a bunch of people who won’t vote republican, but will vote dem if they’re just transphobic enough?
They see the fight for trans rights as “Not worth fighting”, and I worry they’re right, especially with polls showing public support for trans rights is dropping and women’s rights groups view trans women with suspicion.
Calling for a ban on federal funding for trans care isn’t “not fighting”.
This is the same shit we saw in 2023 when democrats campaigned on military spending and migrant caravans. You can choose to ignore random shit the republicans are running with, you can tell voters why its fucking stupid, but if you try to triangulate your position to be closer to the republican one, you make it look like the republicans were right all along.
This dipshit is literally campaigning for republicans at this point.
Then how is he any different from his opponent? Wow, it’s such a mystery why the Dems keep losing elections…. 🙄
Fucking plant.
What a wildly stupid idea.
What a piece of shit
100% he feels weird about his chub when watching peg porn - now he wants us to feel bad too. I am convinced this is always the issue with anyone who is on this side of history.
Peg leg porn, what will they think of next? Eye patch por… oh… oh wait never mind.
The primaries are over.
I voted for someone other than Turek but Turek won anyway.
So what happens now?
Turek is horrible in this regard, but I have to vote for him anyway because he wants to TRY to ban transgender care, emphasis on TRY while the other party wants to do worse.
Everyone needs to get this through their heads.
Go talk to american muslims who couldn’t vote for Kamala because she supported Israel.
Not voting perpetuates more harm than voting for the bad guy who is less bad.
Voting third party at this point in the election cycle perpetuates more harm than voting for the bad guy who is less bad.
THE FACTS ARE SIMPLE:
One of two people will win this race. There is no other outcome at this point.
This primary was decided by votes, not anti-bernie-level dnc trickery.
You have to vote for the one who will hurt you less or it will get worse than even this.
I hate everything about it, but this is very simple: at this point anything other than a vote for turek is a vote for escalating harm to trans people to levels even higher than what turek wants.
That is all there is to it.
Go vote.
Do not let this rhetoric stop you from turning out to vote.
That is what the people behind the machine want.
This should be a learned lesson at this point but people like Erin are somehow still getting spun up by propaganda and failing to see the simple, shitty, crushing truth here, which is that an anti-trans democrat who only wants to ban things because his donors tell him to is still more pro-trans than any other option we have at this point in this one race.
Voting is not enough. Voting for transphobes puts transphobes in power. Call his campaign office and tell him you disagree with his stance. Go to a townhall event and call him to the carpet in front of everyone. Tell him he needs to earn your vote, and his behavior isn’t fucking cutting it.
You can vote for him anyway, but he doesn’t need to know that. He needs to be told out loud that he’s doing the wrong thing, often and by many people.
I hope that the trans and LGBTQ community comes together and does an Abandon Harris protest movement.
Sitting alone and not voting won’t do anything but have Democrats keep dismissing you as a shitty voter.
Banding together and telling the Democratic party to nut the fuck up and stop voting for morally bankrupt candidates publicly and in one voice will make a difference.
Plus this whole bullshit about vote Blue no matter who when it’s never reciprocated is not a good excuse to vote for someone, even if they call themselves a Democrat, who wants to ensure you’re a second class citizen.
Be fucking better you shitty Democrats.
We have NO Choice but to Vote for Him! Vote BLUE no Matter WHO!
-Democrats who are Voting for Republican Mike Rogers INSTEAD of Democrat Abdul El-Sayed!
“It’s not about supporting only your ideal candidate, it’s about picking the direction you want the country to go”
Fucking both of these roads lead to ruin I’d like to turn around but that’s not a fucking option.
One is less bad. That’s the facts.
One wants to take your rights away, the other one wants to take your rights away.
That’s not one less bad for the people who’s human rights are being taken away.
One side unanimously wants to take your rights away and have sworn unquestioning fealty to their dear leader who stokes their hatred every day.
The other side has a few spoilers who are willing to break with the party line on a few critical issues and join the side that hates you.
Is that what being “the same” looks like?
A candidate that wants to take your rights away compared to another candidate that wants to take your rights away is what I’m seeing here and those two candidates, on this issue, there is no difference and that’s what we’re talking about here with this particularly shitty centrist Democrat.
We can talk about those “few spoilers” and how shitty they are but that’s a different thread and conversation.
Okay but how many comments here are pointing to the democrats as a party and saying “see, we knew you were all the same as republicans”?
Call out turek for being an out-of-touch bigot, sure. He brought it on himself.
But when has making sweeping generalizations based on a few examples ever been the thing a rational and balanced person concludes?
I’m one of those people. One is less bad.
You do you, I mean if you’re okay with it and think it’s one less bad, that’s cool by me, no skin off my back.
One is demonstrably less bad, and only MAGAt trash are stupid enough to think in such stupid simplistic and false paradigms.
You do you. I don’t give two fucks if you think one person who hates trans people is better than the other person who hates trans people is better, who am I to argue with your opinion.
I simply happen to think the person who hates trans people is no better than the person who hates trans people when it comes to not hating trans people as the baseline.
But thanks for the nice ad hominem attack, great conversation.
If you’re in a car, and you have a fork ahead of you. The right path takes you directly off a cliff, and the left path circles around a tree before taking you off the same cliff, are you really going to stay in the car?
Is it a fast car and how close is the other side?
Like what if instead if dying in a fiery crash I just landed a sick jump?
So “aim for the cliff and put the pedal to the metal”? Is that your outlook?
That’s kinda like “aim for the bushes,” innit?
Are you leaving the country? Because that’s the only way to get out of the car. Everything else leads to one of two possibilities, regardless of your feelings about it. And one is less bad. That’s the facts
No. One is bad now, the other is just as bad but delayed by a cycle.
And no, leaving the country is not the only option. It’s the only option they want you to consider, but it’s not the only option.
Oh go fuck yourself accelerationist. Go back to ml ya fuckin cartoon.
Bro I just want to turn the car around. You’re the one arguing for the cliff.
The Republican winning is literally the less bad option, because if the Dems see this guy win they’ll realize that people who claim to support trans rights will vote for them even when they sell trans people down the river, and at that point the strategically correct move will be to abandon support for trans rights everywhere. And then there will be zero resistance whatsoever to the trans genocide. It’s better that they lose one seat than that the entire party gets a message that this is acceptable.
Not that you should vote based on the absurd ideology of “lesser evilism” in the first place.
Fuck off tankie.
Trans rights are human rights. The people, united, must never be divided. We must hang together, or we will each hang separately.
Anyone who’s tired of watching these liberals betray and sell out marginalized people, anyone who believes in solidarity, and realizes that this won’t stop until we make them stop, remember: It’s us “tankies” who actually believe in those values.
Liberals will sell you down the river in a heartbeat, the moment it’s politically convenient. You can watch it happening here in real time, it’s as plain as day.
Well said. The number of people who seem to think that there’s some magical other option for another, more progressive candidate to pop up on the ballot is frustrating.
I know this is Iowa. I know it’s always a stretch to court poorly educated people because appealing to ethnocentric bias and anger is always easier.
One can hope this is a bait-and-switch thing that we often see happen in the reverse way with dipshits like Sinema or Fetterman but I seriously doubt it.
This is honestly such an easy issue to navigate if you frame it around individual freedom and redirect the conversation to war, gas prices, cost of living etc.
The depressing thing i fear is that polling on trans rights must be bad enough that some dems feel this is a position that benefits them. Newsom seems to think it benefits him, slimy amoral scumbag that he is.
The dems don’t want to accept any responsiblity for the perception that they’re not meaningfully different from fascists, but they also want to throw trans people to the wolves when they’re already one of the most murdered groups in society.
It’s just consultants. The audience and constituents that are being listened to are just consultants. Most people don’t give a fuck about trans people cuz they are such a tiny minority. Neoliberal consultants have seen the success of conservative culture war narratives and have adopted the, “can’t beat 'em, join 'em” strategy because they don’t want to do the actual work beating culture war narratives would require, which is pushing progressive policies.
I don’t know what the polls say on this issue, but if the Democrats throw trans people to the wolves, it’s because their “donors” said to; polling is only relevant if Amazon agrees.
For example, polls show support for term limits is 83%; it doesn’t matter, because Meta doesn’t want term limits. I could list ten issues with over 80% support from all Americans; they’ve wanted these very basic no-brainer things for DECADES.
Just like labor discovered long ago, Democrats (or Rs, bOtH sIdEs, etc) will abandon any issue for enough “donations”.
I think meta has less to do with term limits than no one being willing to vote themselves out of a steady job.
There was a massive study from princeton over a decade ago showing that since the end of the civil rights era, not a single piece of public policy reflected public opinion.
The conclusion was that there is no evidence that the US is a democracy, and it explicitly said we’ve functionally been an oligarchy since the 70s.
Hypothetically, would this DOJ even bother investigating the assassination of a Democrat? Asking for a hypothetical friend.
Hypothetically, would this DOJ even bother investigating the assassination of a Democrat? Asking for a hypothetical friend.
Honestly whatever the answer is will undoubtedly be considered against lemmy worlds tos by mods or admins
Sitting in that chair, playing someone who understands discrimination and fairness because you can’t walk or please a woman, and using the way other people perceive you to say:
“Really it’s the trans women who are oppressing the cis women. The trans women are oppressing all of us with skyrocketing insurance rates, and by making us look at them.”
Is disgusting, cowardly, and shows us that Josh Turek’s biggest disability, is the fetid rot of a person he is.
“Really it’s the trans women who are oppressing the cis women. The trans women are oppressing all of us with skyrocketing insurance rates, and by making us look at them.”
“Wheel chair bound people are oppressing able bodied people with skyrocketing building cost due to mandating ramps and elevators thanks to the ADA; and by making us look at them.” Incredible someone can’t see this same warped logic applied to them.
Removed by mod
No.
So, like, do anarchists not abide any kind of government, even if a hypothetical government doesn’t claim authority over anarchists who don’t consent to it?
You don’t abide by any kind of government. You can’t. Your will cannot align to be violated. This is why you believe the purpose of voting is for, so when one person does something with your money that you don’t agree with, you believe you can get another person who won’t do those things.
I would argue that it isn’t that you’re in favor of government, it’s that you’re in favor of a justice system, school for your kids, roads, and other infrastructure. But to say you need the system of coercion we have in place else we can’t have those things is just nonsense. Would you not pay to have security if the government didn’t do police? Is your argument that other people wouldn’t? Who are these “barbarians” who wouldn’t? Do you know them? I don’t. I don’t surround myself with people like that, so it always diverts back to this idea that it’s the “others”, the “outsiders”, the “barbarians” who wouldn’t do this stuff if not coersed. Never us.
And even if you wanted to argue that you wouldn’t want to pay for police then you’re just arguing for less government, aren’t you? If you wouldn’t pay for police unless forced, then you don’t want police that badly. This isn’t a difficult concept. If I want something, I go and buy it. If I don’t buy it, I didn’t want it that badly. I fundamentally decided that I value my money more than the good or service itself, so I didn’t make the trade.
I simply take it one step further and understand that you shouldn’t be able to take my money to do anything with that I don’t agree with. If I agreed to it I would give you the money without the coercion. When I want something, I buy it from the store. When I don’t want something, you have to take money from me to get it if you won’t buy it yourself.
There is no such thing as governments, mind you. There are only people. If your neighbor were to come to your home and tell you they want $500 to do something with and you disagreed and they returned with a weapon and threatened you unless you gave it to them, you would immediately admit that such a scenario would be both immoral and crazy. The thing is, the propaganda you’ve been raised with is duping you into believing that this isn’t exactly what’s going on because they slapped a badge on your neighbor and convinced you that it’s not theft and authoritarianism.
If your neighbor made a nice looking badge and pinned it to their lapel, would that make it official? What if 10 of your neighbors all agreed that it was official and legit? Does it make it official and legit? What about 20 neighbors? What about 50? 500?
If not 1, then not 1 billion. No number of people agreeing to something warrants that it is legitimate. It used to be that millions of people agreed in slavery and slavery has never been legitimate. It was thought by many as legitimate, but so what?
There isn’t anything wrong with government if that government isn’t robbing you - that’s the rub. All a government really is is a relative force monopoly. If the government vanished tomorrow and your neighbors all gathered together with you and agreed to help one another and protect each other from outsiders who might seek to do harm to you or your properties, you would be a government, albeit a small one.
And I’m not saying we could or even should do away with current governments in the world tomorrow - even if we could. We would need 50-100 years or more to slowly wittle away these systems so that free people can take their place.
So to answer your question specifically, I don’t think it has anything to do with anarchists and everything to do with logic. If it is not OK for your neighbor John to do to you what I outlined above, then it isn’t OK for Tom to do it if Tom is a representative of the “government”. There is no such thing as saying you can rape someone because a group of people got together and decided what you decide is right is legitimate and therefore, it isn’t even rape.
The mere fact that your neighbor doing what the government does would be even legally classified as theft but when the government does it it’s not called by that same word should be a gargantuan red flag. Only the politicians and political manipulate language in that way. The honest of us just call it what it actually is - theft.
If I own something and you want it and I do not want to give it to you and you take it, that is theft. It doesn’t matter who does it or what “group” they are affiliated to. You don’t get to steal and then try and say it isn’t theft because your version is “legitimate”.
You moron, we’re getting a taste of your hell scape now…
The lettuce is full of diarrhea, the beef is poisoned and the air is poison and children are dying of preventable diseases
Morons that don’t understand the purpose of government infuriate me
