“Why Should Men Pay For It?”

Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill. questions Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on the implementation failures of the Affordable Care Act, Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2013, on Capitol Hill in Washington. CREDIT: AP Photo/Susan Walsh.

Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill. questions Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on the implementation failures of the Affordable Care Act, Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2013, on Capitol Hill in Washington. CREDIT: AP Photo/Susan Walsh.

At a hearing markup on Wednesday, Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) suggested that one reason Republicans object to Obamacare is that men have to pay for plans that cover maternity services, such as prenatal care.

The heated exchange happened during a lengthy markup session for the GOP’s Obamacare replacement bill in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Shimkus was responding to a question from Rep. Michael Doyle (D-PA), who asked a different colleague which mandates in Obamacare he took issue with.

“What mandate in the Obamacare bill does he take issue with?” Doyle asked. “Certainly not with pre-existing conditions, or caps on benefits or letting your child stay on the policy until 26, so I’m curious what is it we’re mandating?”

“What about men having to purchase prenatal care?” Shimkus butted in. “Is that not correct? And should they?”

Here’s a thought, you dimwitted dipstick – men are involved with the process of pregnancy. If you’re truly deadset on not paying for prenatal care, then perhaps you should propose a healthy penis penalty – everyone who is using one has to pay into a healthcare fund for reproductive care, including parental leave. After all, if you’re not going to pay attention to where you’re shooting that tarse, and refuse to take responsibility, I don’t see why women should have to bear the full cost. While you’re at it, increase that penis penalty by another ten percent – this can go into a fund providing accessible and affordable contraception, something else that really cuts down on costs, but you manage to be against that one, too. Oh, let’s tack on another ten percent – it could go to opt in sexual education classes, for everyone!

The fact that prenatal care, which results in healthy women and infants, is an excellent preventative act, and it’s certainly much cheaper to practice than the catastrophic costs involved when there is no care, and things go very wrong, doesn’t seem to matter to republicans. The most obvious practicalities can’t seem to penetrate the density of their ignorance and entitlement.

You can read about the whole mess, in-depth, at Think Progress.

Men Say The Stupidest Things.

urkey President Recep Tayyip, South Africa President Jacob Zuma, and President Donald Trump. CREDIT: AP Photo/Adam Peck.

Turkey President Recep Tayyip, South Africa President Jacob Zuma, and President Donald Trump. CREDIT: AP Photo/Adam Peck.

Think Progress has a rundown on the misogynistic stupidity many world leaders spew all over the place. It’s a timely and fitting reminder of just who comprises the worst of obstacles when it comes to equality. I’ll just include the opener here, which is the Tiny Tyrant. You might want to avoid many of the videos, including the one of the Tiny Tyrant. It’s nauseating in the extreme to see people cheering on such open misogyny.

There are few universal truths, but one thing is for certain: women around the globe are still governed by leaders who think less of them. You would guess that lawmakers would be more educated about half of the world’s population, or, at the very least, set their biases aside while leading.

That is not the case.

As women around the world strike in solidarity in honor of International Women’s Day, here is a glimpse of some of the ridiculous, misogynistic comments that presidents and other influential legislators have openly made about women in the past year (in no particular order):

President Donald Trump, USA

We don’t even need to talk about THAT video from 2005. There is plenty of recent material to choose from.

There was that time he called Hillary Clinton a “nasty woman,” and that time he said nobody would vote for Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina because of her face, or that other time he slut-shamed and commented on Miss Universe contestant Alicia Machado’s weight. We’ll just go with this:

The full rundown on stupid, misogynistic men in power is here.

A Planned, Personal Thank You.

pastor-800x430

Pastor Greg Locke.

Tennessee Pastor Greg Locke is well known for his spittle-flecked invectives over most everything, but mostly over…women. Everyone knows everything is the fault of women, right? One woman made a donation to Planned Parenthood in Mr. Locke’s name, and he had a meltdown over it. He really, really doesn’t want anyone to ever do this again, so…

In the video below, he howls about the fact this thank you card was sent to him and wants to make it crystal clear that he doesn’t in anyway support women’s health care at Planned Parenthood. He warned that such donations in his name are a waste of time and he’ll deposit any thank you cards in the trash. So, whatever you do, don’t waste your time donating to the Planned Parenthood clinic closest to Greg Locke’s church—Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee—and don’t waste your time making sure a thank you card gets mailed to him at:

Greg Locke
c/o Global Vision Bible Church
2060 Old Lebanon Dirt Rd
Mt Juliet, TN 37122

Via Daily Kos.

Abusive Assholes Might Have A Change of Heart.

Mississippi state Rep. Andy Gipson (YouTube).

Mississippi state Rep. Andy Gipson (YouTube).

Domestic violence as grounds for divorce? No, no, those abusive asses might have a change of heart, y’know. Could happen, right? Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. That said, Rep. Andy Gipson really thinks marriage ought to be a prison for abused spouses.

The Republican chair of the Mississippi House Judiciary B Committee this week killed a bill that would have made domestic violence grounds for divorce.

According to Mississippi Today, Republican Chairman Andy Gipson said that he would not take up Senate Bill 2703 before a Tuesday deadline, effectively allowing the bill to die.

The bill would have amended Mississippi law “to create domestic violence as additional grounds for fault divorce.”

[…]

Gipson, who is a Baptist pastor, has said that laws should encourage people to stay married.

“At a time I think we need to be adopting policies that promote marriage and people sticking together, I have some serious concerns about opening the floodgates any more than they already are,” the lawmaker explained. “I think the floodgates are already open and this just tears the dam down.”

“We need to have policies that strengthen marriage,” Gipson added. “If a person is abusive, they need to have a change in behavior and change of heart.”

Jesus fuckin’ Christ. You know what I think, Mr. Gipson? I think being christian ought to be a legal bar to being a politician. Especially asshole christians like yourself.

Via Raw Story.

Bring me one woman who has been left behind. Bring me one. There’s not one…

A one-month dosage of hormonal birth control pills is displayed Friday, Aug. 26, 2016, in Sacramento, Calif. CREDIT: AP /Rich Pedroncelli.

A one-month dosage of hormonal birth control pills is displayed Friday, Aug. 26, 2016, in Sacramento, Calif. CREDIT: AP /Rich Pedroncelli.

The Trump administration may weaken or eliminate the provision for full coverage of contraception in the Affordable Care Act, experts say, and it may not require any action from Republican allies in Congress.

The provision that allows women to receive full coverage for birth control — including insertion and removal of an IUD — could be eliminated or at least weakened through regulations, guidance, or law. Reproductive rights advocates are also waiting to see whether the Trump administration will continue to defend the mandate in the courts on Tuesday.

Newly minted Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price has a record of dismissing women’s need for full coverage of birth control. In an interview with Think Progress in 2012, Price said, “Bring me one woman who has been left behind. Bring me one. There’s not one … The fact of the matter is this is a trampling on religious freedom and religious liberty in this country.”

During his confirmation hearing, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) asked Price about his 2012 statement on birth control because her constituents say birth control without a co-pay is essential to their health care. Price refused to commit to full coverage of birth control.

“There are avenues in the heath care system that doctors and hospitals take to make sure people can get the health care they need,” Price answered.

Price seems to think contraception is like having a doctor fill up a bag with pharmaceutical samples of something or other, to help out patients who can’t afford prescriptions. That sort of thing is usually done for a one time treatment. Contraception doesn’t work like that. As a former physician, I’m sure Mr. Price is aware of that, but that’s not as important as preventing people from having healthcare, especially those awful women. The way Price and his fellow travelers feel about it, contraception is a lifestyle choice, not a health issue.

Planned Parenthood clinics told NPR that, since the election of President Donald Trump, they have received more calls than usual from women interested in booking appointments for IUDs. An IUD is one of the most effective methods of birth control, since it is more than 99 percent effective. Without coverage provided by the mandate, a woman who works full time at minimum wage may have to pay a month’s salary for the cost of getting an IUD, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Women who use contraceptives consistently and correctly only account for 5 percent of all unintended pregnancies. But with financial barriers to access — especially access to effective but costly methods such as IUDs — women’s ability to prevent unintended pregnancies is significantly hampered.

41 years ago, I got an IUD through planned parenthood. At that time, I was a paid member, so it didn’t cost me a thing. I don’t remember the membership cost, but it was around 25 or 35 dollars. Way back then, people in general were favorable towards accessible, inexpensive birth control. There was still a very heavy stigma attached to single parenthood, and it was still considered to be shameful to be pregnant out of wedlock. The stigma was starting to fade in 1975, but it was still strong enough that the reasoning was contraception and pregnancy prevention was better than a bunch of single mothers. It was also easy  and hassle free to obtain an abortion back then. How things have changed.

In addition to what is happening in the courts, it is possible that an executive order could greatly expand exemptions for companies with religious or moral objections. A leaked draft of an executive order, first obtained by The Nation and Reveal earlier this month, would significantly weaken the contraception guarantee.

The order would appear to exempt any “closely held for-profit corporations” with moral or religious objections to meeting the requirements of the provision and lets them exclude coverage for contraception. Under the Obama administration’s religious accommodation, insurance companies have to provide separate coverage to women at no additional cost. Kinsey Hasstedt, senior policy manager for the Guttmacher Institute, said the draft is cause for concern, even though an official order has not been released.

“The leaked draft executive order would expand accommodations so it would be simpler for employers to reject some or all birth control options,” Hasstedt said. “It would be a dramatic expansion of exemptions.”

This draft uses broad terms to define religious freedom and requires the Department of Justice to defend “religious freedom.” It does specifically mention objections to abortion, contraception, and premarital sex, however.

The Religious Reich Republicans have been salivating for ages over the chance to kill off accessible, affordable contraception, and it looks like that chance has arrived. Think Progress has the in-depth coverage on this issue.

Real Men and Real Women…

Walt Unks, Winston-Salem Journal.

Walt Unks, Winston-Salem Journal.

A billboard between Winston-Salem and Greensboro has caught the eye — and the ire — of some who think it is a slam on gender equality. The sign reads, “Real men provide, Real women appreciate it.”

The billboard belongs to Whiteheart Outdoor Advertising, a company operated by Bill Whiteheart. He is a former Republican member of the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners and was known for being socially and fiscally conservative, according to the Winston-Salem Journal.

The billboard was purchased by a company that wishes to remain nameless, Whiteheart said. It went up Friday and will remain for about 30 days.

A Whiteheart billboard costs about $2,000, he said.

Whiteheart said his company’s job is to convey a message, not to take sides on it.

[…]

The owner of a Winston-Salem women’s boutique called Kleur has organized a demonstration against the billboard’s message for Sunday at 11 a.m.

“We are NOT protesting that the sign is capable of existing, or the people who put it up, or the ad agency, or the right to put it up. We are protesting patriarchy and sexism, and that this antiquated way of thinking about women exists at all,” the group’s Facebook page said.

The protest takes place at the billboard’s location on I-40 West, headed into Winston -Salem from Kernersville. It is about 85 miles northeast of Charlotte.

Via News Observer and Charlotte Observer.

Arctic Hysteria.

A still from Arke’s 1996 video Arctic Hysteria shows the artist naked and crawling across a photograph of Nuugaarsuk Point in Greenland. Photo courtesy of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Acquired with funding from Anker Fonden 
Poul Buchard/Brøndum & Co.

A still from Arke’s 1996 video Arctic Hysteria shows the artist naked and crawling across a photograph of Nuugaarsuk Point in Greenland. Photo courtesy of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Acquired with funding from Anker Fonden 
Poul Buchard/Brøndum & Co.

Most people have never heard of Pia Arke, which is a shame, because she was an artist who took on one huge subject: the colonial takeover of indigenous peoples by those who termed themselves “explorers” and “discoverers”. There’s a great deal of horror inherent in any indigenous peoples experiences with colonialism. Unsurprisingly, indigenous women got the worst of it.

In the spring of 1995, Danish-Greenlandic artist Pia Arke was digging through the archives of New York City’s Explorers Club. She was searching for maps, ethnographic images, and scientific miscellany that she could repurpose into collages that confront Greenland’s colonial past. Arke knew early 20th-century adventurers often, by turns, demeaned and romanticized her Inuit ancestors. Even so, one photo from American explorer Robert E. Peary’s collection shocked her: a native woman, topless and screaming, restrained by two fur-clad and seemingly untroubled white men. A curator told Arke the woman could have been suffering from a madness called Arctic hysteria.

More than 20 years later, Arke’s mesmerizing film Arctic Hysteria, which she created the year after she found that dark photo, was looping endlessly in an alcove at Denmark’s Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Situated in a small town along the Baltic Sea about 50 kilometers north of Copenhagen, the Louisiana Museum enjoys the kind of international acclaim that makes it a dream exhibit space for most artists. Arke’s work was part of last year’s star-studded exhibit Illumination, which featured such luminaries as Ai Weiwei, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Wall, and Gerhard Richter. The flashiest Arke piece on display was Legende I-V, a series of five collages of Greenlandic maps and sepia-toned family snapshots layered with imported commodities such as rice, sugar, and coffee. Legende I-V is physically imposing—it dominated an entire gallery wall—and hauntingly beautiful. The foodstuffs function both symbolically and texturally, the photographs evoke the warmth of kinship, and the cartographic lines of Greenland, stamped with place names referencing colonial explorers (Peary Land, Humboldt Glacier, and Kane Bassin, for example), loom insistently over everyone.

Arke’s Arctic Hysteria is equally magnetic. The performance, which lasts six minutes, is silent and consists almost entirely of one scene: Arke crawling naked across a giant black-and-white photo of Nuugaarsuk Point, a spit of land at the terminus of a C-shaped bay. The artist lived there, outside the small town of Narsaq, Greenland, with her parents and siblings in the late 1960s. In the video, Arke strokes the artificial landscape, rolls across it, and sniffs it like an animal. Then she methodically rips the entire thing to shreds, gathers the curled shards of paper, and lets them fall across her shoulders and thighs. The intimacy of the performance and the title’s historical allusion are classic Arke.

[…]

Historical context points to alternative interpretations. Inuit women labored at the very bottom of the social hierarchy on Peary’s expeditions and in his camps, expected to sew, fish, carry wood, and submit to the Americans’ sexual desires. Peary, for example, fathered two sons with his Inuit laundress, Ahlikasingwah. His navigator, Robert Bartlett, viewed one woman’s hysteria as simple protest, or “pure cussedness.” Accounts described women who seemed intent on escape or dissent leaping over the ship’s railings or shouting for a knife. Expedition member Donald MacMillan recounted finding a woman named Inawaho naked and screaming, presumably unaware of her surroundings and out of her mind. But as soon as MacMillan pulled out his camera, Inawaho hurled huge chunks of ice at him and later begged him to destroy the photos. Were these women, in fact, crazy? Or were they reacting perfectly rationally—even bravely—to their circumstances?

You can read and see more here.

Paid Protesters and Offenses Against ‘God’.

AP Photo.

AP Photo.

Louie Gohmert, not exactly known for any sort of rational viewpoint, has now picked up the banner of “Paid Protesters!” and running with it. For the most part, there isn’t anywhere Gohmert is taken seriously, except for Breitbart. Yes, Fascist Daily has embraced the daft Gohmert.

That congressman is Louie Gohmert of Texas, who is well known for his crazy talk, such as his statement that gay men make ineffective soldiers because they’re getting massages from their lovers all day. But Breitbart and its ilk treat him as a serious person.

“This is fake news,” he said of the protests against Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch. “This is people who are just out there to create the appearance of obstruction. You know, Patrick Poole, remember back in one of the demonstrations on the Mall, caught one of the guys: ‘Hey, how much are you getting paid?’ He said, ‘$15 an hour. I thought everybody was getting that.’ They’re getting paid. The Soros money gets spread around.

As usual, rethugs seldom care about the source of their information. No one loves bullshit quite as much as conservatives.

Poole, by the way, is a conspiracy-minded blogger who regularly rails against “radical Islam.” It’s not clear what protest on the National Mall Gohmert is referencing, but several right-wingers have asserted that Soros funded the Women’s March on Washington and paid its participants — something the fact-checking site PolitiFact rated “Pants on Fire.”

Get those facts right before you twist them to pieces, okay? As usual, Ann Coulter has been waxing glib about the Tiny Dictator, never getting a single fact right, because hey, they have alternative facts, and those are better, right?

She particularly praised Trump’s executive order banning entry to the U.S. by residents of seven majority-Muslim countries, and his ban on refugees in general. “And as I wrote in my column in Breitbart, it’s not just that we’re worried they’re going to shoot up a gay nightclub or a community center in San Bernardino, the Boston Marathon, Fort Hood, 9/11 — that isn’t the only purpose to this,” she said. “What’s the upside? We keep bringing in all of these elderly, sickly poor people. They aren’t fleeing anything except not as good or free health care in Yemen as in America. We have our own poor people. We have our own elderly.”

:Must not drink tea when reading: Not as good or free health care in America? Okaaaaaaaaaay, we’re on another planet now, right? Because on the planet known as Earth, the country known as America has never had good or free health care. People don’t completely uproot themselves and place themselves in tenuous and frightening position because American healthcare. This is jaw-dropping willful delusion.

Well, so much for “Give me your tired, your poor,” plus Coulter doesn’t generally express much concern about impoverished American citizens. And several studies have indicated that neither legal nor undocumented immigrants are a drain on social services. Check out The New Republic’s analysis here. And, of course, some of the attacks she cited were committed by people born in the U.S. (Surprisingly, she did not mention the Bowling Green Massacre.) But misleading rhetoric like Coulter’s is exactly what builds support for Trump’s xenophobic policies.

The republican insistence on any and all terrorism being “outside” once again emphasises their view on domestic terrorism: oh, that? No, no such thing. America has a huge problem with homegrown terrorism, and the denial continues, and we will pay for that, because all those homegrown terrorists think they are home free in the Fascist States of America now. They aren’t far wrong, either.

We’ve been reporting a lot on the past week on potential Trump executive orders affecting LGBT people. First there were rumors that he would undo President Obama’s executive order prohibiting companies with federal contracts from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. He then announced he would not, a decision that was reportedly influenced by daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner — although they are hardly real allies of LGBT people.

Some on the far right were not pleased with Trump’s decision. Among them was Alan Keyes, who worked in the Reagan administration and has sought the presidency, both as a Republican and as a member of minor parties.

Oh goody, yet another World Nut Daily talking head. This is sure to be predictable: Queer Bad! Transgender Terrifying!

“The existential perpetuation of humanity depends upon procreation,” Keyes wrote. “The relations between man and woman, with a view to human procreation, toward which they are naturally impelled, therefore involve unalienable right.” LGBT people, according to Keyes, are “impelled by their own will and preference toward lifestyles that have no special regard for the common good.” And they “deny and disparage the God-endowed natural right of procreation,” he added.

People have the right to eschew procreation altogether, y’know. Some people want sprogs, some people don’t. The key here being people. Their particular orientation doesn’t matter. All manner of hetero people can’t have sprogs, but still want them. Do they get booted onto the icky queer pile?

Keyes may be more pleased about another LGBT-related executive order, a draft of which was obtained and published by The Nation last week. It would provide companies, nonprofits, and even government employees a broad license to discriminate, without repercussions, against LGBT people and anyone else who offends a certain set of religious beliefs. The protected beliefs are that only heterosexual marriages are legitimate, that sexual relations are reserved for such marriages, that life begins at conception, and that gender is fixed at birth. White House spokesman Sean Spicer has refused to confirm or deny that the order is under consideration. We haven’t seen the far-right media weighing in on it yet, but activist groups such as the National Organization for Marriage are pushing it.

Another thing that didn’t please the far right last week was the Boy Scouts of America’s decision to admit transgender boys. “The BSA folded on God and how he ‘made them male and female,’” wrote Brent Bozell in a column on Townhall. “In today’s culture, the secular left lets man overrule God. This cowardly shell of an organization should just scrap the references to God, and every God-respecting church should jettison their Boy Scout units to the nearest secular gathering place.” He of course ignores the fact that an increasing number of churches accept and affirm transgender people — and these congregations most likely respect God.

That would be one particular god. That particular god is rejected by a whole lot of people. It has no place in my head or life. I am, as ever, amused by the whole “made them male and female” crap. Yeah, yeah, and supposedly, they were made in Jehovah’s image, too. Christians never ever think that through.

The Advocate has the full run down on fascism today.

 

Sunday Facepalm.

Donald Trump and Wayne Allen Root (YouTube/screen grab).

Donald Trump and Wayne Allen Root (YouTube/screen grab).

There’s a bowlful of facepalm this Sunday. We’ll start with Smarm-master Wayne Allen Root, who has decided that all people who oppose Tiny Dictator Trump are mentally ill.

“There is not much that needs to be said,” Root declared. “They’re unhinged, they’re off the rails, they’re mentally ill. The Democratic Party has Trump Derangement Syndrome and they are no longer an opposition party or a leading party; they’re not willing to come to the table and work, they’re not willing to vote on Supreme Court nominees, they’re just looking to block and boycott. They’re crazy and so we have just got to run the country and ignore them … I think we have got to erase Obama like he was never there.”

Root went on to encourage the state of California “to leave the union” because “it would be the best thing to ever happen to America, conservatives, the Republican Party [and] patriots. My God, if California seceded with its fifty-plus electoral votes, we win every election for the rest of history.”

“We don’t want California as part of this country anymore,” Root continued, adding that he’d also love to see New York, Illinois, Maryland and all of New England likewise secede and “let this country be a nice conservative country run by people like Donald Trump and Wayne Root.”

Just the idea…*shudder*. You would either find me out of the country, or in a seceded state. Interesting, I suppose, that it doesn’t at all occur to Root what would happen to their dictatorship if California, New York, Illinois, Maryland and all of New England did leave all the conservative idiots on their own. Not only would their economy bottom out, but there would be one heck of a brain drain. RWW has the full story.

We now move on to Pastor Carl Gallups, who is railing on about immigration, and how it’s ‘god’s’ punishment. I wish these jackasses would be specific. Really can’t see Set or Dionysus or a host of other gods doing something so psychopathic and petty.

Insisting that this is all part of “spiritual warfare,” Gallups said, “What’s happening now is a big, heavy dose, a seismic shift of common sense, rule of law and human decency is beginning to come back in vogue and the left and their counterpart in the demonic realm, they are screaming, ‘Oh, it’s utter chaos, it’s utter chaos.’”

I haven’t been in any demonic realm, nor have I been screaming “oh, it’s utter chaos” either. I have been doing my best to wake people the fuck up, that’s a bit different. Fighting and Resistance are not the same as quivering in panic, just so you know.

He went on to explain that while “the world is so concerned about the flood of refugees and illegal immigrants that are violating our boundaries and borders,” it can all be traced back to God’s punishment on America for teaching evolution and allowing gay rights and legal abortion.

No, no, no, no, no. I’m not at all concerned about refugees. I am concerned about all the things which are forcing people to flee their countries. I’m fine with the people, it’s all the war, intolerance, and other nastiness I’m primarily concerned with, because it’s those things which need to change. No one has been violating boundaries or borders. It’s a fucking nonsensical concept anyway. Human imposed borders have been shifting for as long as there have been humans. Same thing goes with migration. People move. *Shrug*

“Here’s what I have been saying for years before this date,” he said, “and that was: Look, we have violated the borders of our children’s minds, for 100 years we have told them that they come from monkeys and that there is no God. We have violated the borders of their souls and their spirits. We have violated the borders of the womb in America and have destroyed 60 million children. We have violated the borders of sexuality, we have violated the borders of family, we have violated the borders of marriage, we have violated the borders of gender. And now, as a judgment from God or as discipline from God, our own geographical borders are now being violated.”

Oooh, yes, introducing children to the concept of thinking, then teaching them how to think, yeah, that’s evil. We don’t come from monkeys, you dipshit. We’re apes. It’s an ‘all in the family’ kind of thing. Can’t we have a law somewhere that prohibits idiots from spouting off about biology until they have had to study it? Yeah, yeah. I can dream.

“The borders of the womb.” :chokes: There’s no one uterus, dude. Individual uteruses are not parts of a hive-uterus. A uterus is a bodily organ, not an entity. A uterus is not an individual. Said organs are inside many individuals, who supposedly have control of them, just like the rest of their organs. Many individuals with uteruses aren’t remotely interested in you or anyone else’s opinion on them. As far as my uterus is concerned, consider it an undiscovered country. No one is welcome.

Borders, borders, borders. You’re boring me to death with this obsession. So Jehovah has gotten all pissy and decided to just now do this immigration thing, eh? So, you’re a dyed in the wool idiot, too. I have to say, ol’ El Shaddai has lost his touch. It got so bent out of shape over a lack of hospitality that he crispy crittered two cities, and turned a sorrowful woman into salt, for the great crime of grieving over her lost family and home. If continuing immigration is all it has, I think your god is past its used by date. Just sayin’. RWW has the story.

Last is right wing lawyer, Larry Klayman, who thinks he’s really onto something with suing our former president:

Right-wing attorney Larry Klayman appeared on Steve Malzberg’s Newsmax program today to discuss the lawsuit he has filed against former President Obama for allegedly inciting a protestor opposed to President Trump’s ban on refugees and immigrants from several predominantly Muslim nations to “assault” him at Los Angeles International Airport over the weekend. That “assault” apparently consisted of carrying a sign and yelling at passengers.

“Someone with an Arabic accent, a female, charged at me and others in a very aggressive and provocative way,” Klayman said, “causing us fear of immediate bodily injury or death—that’s the standard for assault. She was obviously egged on by President Obama after he left office, in his private capacity, when he was giving a call to arms, in effect, to protesters to continue this mayhem and destruction.”

Obama was likewise responsible for the violent protest at Berkeley University last night, Klayman said.

Klayman insisted that his lawsuit “has great merit” and that he looks forward to proving that Obama “is responsible … for assaulting me Sunday evening.”

I have run right out of comment. I am so tired of dipshit idiots. RWW has the story and video.

Right Wing Views: Women? Ick.

we-read-breitbart-so-you-dont-have-to-750x

Some nice staffers at The Advocate are reading Breitbart and other fascist publications, so we don’t have to feel all filthy clicking on those sites, but can still know what’s happening. It’s still a very nauseous trip, reading the excerpts, so be warned.

In the current political climate — well, in any political climate — it’s good to know who your adversaries are and what they’re saying. For this reason, we’re initiating a weekly roundup of the highlights and lowlights from Breitbart and other right-wing news and opinion websites.

Our inaugural entry (in more ways than one) takes note of these sites’ coverage and commentary regarding the ban on entry to the U.S. from citizens of seven countries, the Women’s Marches, and Donald Trump’s swearing-in as president.

[…]

Breitbart featured several other defenses of  the Trump order, including a column by failed vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. She denounces “hysteria” over the order and says calling it a ban amounted to “fake news,” then concludes, “Trump’s executive action is a step in the right direction towards welcoming safe, loving, law-abiding, hardworking, patriotic people into our nation that was built on the backs of safe, loving, law-abiding, hardworking, patriotic people willing to assimilate into America’s exceptional melting pot.”

I, I…uh, oh fuck. For the life of me, I cannot figure out, at all, why anyone gives this person space to say anything. It’s nothing but word salad with shit dressing. uStates is a melting pot (not in the least exceptional) because of immigration. (After the genocide of those who were here first, natch.) FFS. All manner of safe, loving, law-abiding, hardworking people have been denied entry and re-entry into the Fascist States of America. What. An. Idiot.

The previous weekend was marked by Women’s March on Washington and sister marches all over the world. In case you think sexism isn’t alive and well, consider what the far-right sites had to say about the actions:

“Just another random protest march by the usual ragbag of leftist suspects, far too many of them blue hair, their whale-like physiques and terrifying camel-toes the size of the Grand Canyon.”

This isn’t from the comments section, folks. This sentence, grammatical problems and all, is from Breitbart contributor James Dellingpole. And wait, there’s more — after sharing his tweet saying men would probably have to fetch their own beers the night after the march, he writes:

“Very few of these shrieking munters — save the token celebrities — will ever find themselves in a position where they are able to fetch a man’s beer from his fridge because first they would have to find a man willing to share the same space with them.”

According to Urban Dictionary, “munter” is British slang for an ugly woman. Dellingpole finishes:

“Still, when all is said and done I think we owe those women who took to the streets across the world in their various pod groups a massive favour. They have reminded us what a Hillary presidency would have looked like every single day for at least four years. And they have swept away any reservations we may have had about the absolute necessity of having voted for Donald Trump.”

Ah yes, women, quelle horreur! Echoes from Euripides’ Hippolyta strike:

Go to hell! I’ll never have my fill of hating

Women, not if I’m said to talk without ceasing,

For women are also unceasingly wicked.

Either someone should teach them to be sensible,

Or let me trample them underfoot.

How little things change, literally, over centuries, when it comes to conservative authoritarians. In 195 bce, Cato the Elder declared:

If every married man had been concerned to ensure that his own wife looked up to him and respected his rightful position as her husband, we should not have half this trouble with women en masse. Instead, women have become so powerful that our independence has been lost in our own homes and is now being trampled and stamped underfoot in public. We have failed to retrain them as individuals, and now they have combined to reduce us to our present panic…It made me blush to push my way through a positive regiment of women a few minutes ago in order to get here. My respect for the position and modesty of them as individuals – a respect which I do not feel for them as a mob – prevented my doing anything as consul which would suggest the use of force. Otherwise I should have said to them, ‘What do you mean by rushing out in public in this unprecedented fashion, blocking the streets and shouting out to men who are not your husbands? Could you not have asked your questions at home, and have asked them of your husbands?

[…]

Woman is a violent and uncontrolled animal, and it is not good giving her the reins and expecting her not to kick over the traces. No, you have got to keep the reins firmly in your own hands…Suppose you allow them to acquire or to extort one right after another, and in the end to achieve complete equality with men, do you think that you will find them bearable? Nonsense. Once they have achieved equality, they will be your masters. – Livy, The Early History of Rome, translated by Aubrey de Sélin-court, Penguin Classics, 2002.

Cato’s speech failed, and the Oppian laws were overturned in 195 bce. This was the first recorded protest movement ever organized by women. It’s now 2017 ce, and we have not yet achieved equality, and still find ourselves needing to protest in the streets, much to the displeasure of misogynists everywhere, who still carry the attitude and mores of Cato the Elder.

There were more right wing comments on the Womens’ March:

“Commentators on MSNBC bragged about the crowd size of the women’s marches but, as a fellow female, I couldn’t help noticing the size of some of the marchers. There is a big difference between crowd numbers and crowd size.” — Townhall columnist Susan Stamper Brown

“Never have so many hotness-challenged crones so vehemently rejected being grabbed while simultaneously being at so little risk of it.” — Townhall columnist Kurt Schlicter

And conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s Infowars site, which is one that really brings the crazy, approvingly posted a video of a conservative activist called Big Joe confronting a participant in the Women’s March in Los Angeles. “Planned Parenthood is a racist system,” he says. “Margaret Sanger [Planned Parenthood’s founder] thought very little of black people. She thought they were ignorant and shouldn’t exist and shouldn’t reproduce. … You want to be against racists? You should be against Planned Parenthood.” (Editor’s note: The assertion that Sanger and her organization were/are racist is a bald-faced lie, but many on the right believe it.)

Some things never change. The full article is at The Advocate.

#Dress Like A Woman!

Axios has a good article up about Trump’s obsession with how people look, because that’s all that’s important – do they look the part? That’s how he chose half his fucking cabinet, for Christ’s sake.
This is just one little bit, but it’s sparked a big reaction:

Trump likes the women who work for him “to dress like women,” says a source who worked on Trump’s campaign. “Even if you’re in jeans, you need to look neat and orderly.” We hear that women who worked in Trump’s campaign field offices — folks who spend more time knocking on doors than attending glitzy events — felt pressure to wear dresses to impress Trump.

The Guardian and Raw Story both have articles up about the backlash, full of tweets.

Hmmm, I think I need another suit. I don’t have a tux, but I do have a top hat…oh, and I have a tux shirt, like Colette’s! Time to shop.

#Dress Like A Woman.

Arkansas Act 45.

Danny Johnston/AP Photo.

Danny Johnston/AP Photo.

A new Arkansas law bans one of the safest and most common abortion procedures and allows family members to block an abortion by suing the abortion provider.

Arkansas Act 45, signed by Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson last Thursday, bans dilation and evacuation abortions, the most common abortion procedure during the second trimester of pregnancy. Rushed from filing to law in less than two months, the legislation effectively blocks abortions after 14 weeks by making the safest procedure a felony. The earliest current abortion bans block the procedure after 20 weeks.

With no exception for rape or incest, and a clause that allows a woman’s spouse or parent to sue an abortion provider, the law potentially allows the fetus’s father to sue even in cases of spousal rape or incest, abortion rights activists say. The law could go into effect as early as spring.

Emphasis mine. Looks like Arkansas is going full court biblical, reducing women to mere things, at best, nothing more than chattel. Interestingly enough, the fuckwits in Arkansas are also crusading against Sharia law. Apparently, they are utterly immune from irony poisoning.

State Rep. Brandt Smith (R-Jonesboro) introduced HB 1041, which won approval Thursday from a House judiciary committee, to “American laws for American courts,” reported the Arkansas Times.

He claims the measure was not specifically aimed at Sharia law, although it’s similar to legislation introduced in other states based on the conspiracy theory that Islamic law is creeping into the American legal system.

Yes, you could say Islamic law is creeping in, it’s called American laws for American courts, laws which exist for no other reason than to oppress and grind people down into the dirt, stripping them of their human rights and autonomy. At least Islamic law makes exceptions for rape and incest for 120 days when it comes to abortion, which makes that law better than the “American” one in Arkansas. Getting back to the Arkansas law, they aren’t alone:

When not working in the legislature, Mayberry doubles as the president of Arkansas Right to Life, a subsidiary of the National Right to Life Committee. Introducing the bill before the Arkansas House in January, Mayberry announced that the text was “based on model legislation from National Right to Life that has been passed, or similar legislation has been passed in six states.”

Those six states are Alabama, Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and West Virginia. In all but the latter two, which passed their bills in spring 2016, legal challenges have temporarily blocked the laws from taking effect. As in the other states, the Arkansas legislation takes a hard line against dilation and evacuation procedures, making their use a Class D felony, punishable by a $10,000 fine or six years in prison.

[…]

But one particularly punishing element of Arkansas’s law has not been tested in court, even in Mississippi and West Virginia, where versions of the bans still stand, reproductive rights activists say.

A clause in the Arkansas law allows a woman’s spouse, parent or guardian, or health care provider to sue an abortion provider for civil damages or injunctive relief that could stop the abortion. And because Act 45 does not provide any exceptions for cases of rape or incest, the clause could allow the fetus’s father to sue an abortion provider even in cases of spousal rape or incest.

Full stories at The Daily Beast and Raw Story.