Poor women's health under attack.

 I personally don't have a stake in the abortion fight. I am, after all, a man.

I suspect, though, that if men could get pregnant there would be drive through abortion clinics on damn near every corner. They would be more popular than McDonald's.

I guess  you can tell that I am pro-choice, and I definitely don't like to get personal with a woman's body unless she asks me to. This is not  the case with right-wingnut men, they love to tell women what to do with their bodies.

Today the GOP voted to allow states to defund Planned Parenthood, which, to right-wingnuts, is a somewhat of a dirty word. They despise Planned Parenthood, because to them it represents abortion on demand and women taking control of their own bodies.

Sadly, as is the case with so many other things, they are wrong about what that organization does.

Panned Parenthood offers so much more to women (especially poor ones) than just abortions. Numerous poor women and women of color depend on Planned Parenthood to provide them with basic healthcare and preventive screening for illnesses. But the right-wingnuts in Washington do not care, because poor women can't afford lobbyist.

The vote was close, and it took Mike Pence (the guy right out of central casting to play a Nazi soldier) to cast the deciding vote to block access to reproductive health services for poor women.

This is the same Mike Pence, by the way, who recently said that he will not dine alone with another women if his wife is not present.  He also said that he will not go anywhere that alcohol is being served without his wife present.  I am just going to leave that one out there..... no wait, I can't.

"This rule will, without question, stop women from excelling in the workplace that is the White House. As Mother Jones Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery wrote in a Twitter thread: 

“If Pence won’t eat with a woman alone, how could a woman be Chief of Staff, or lawyer, campaign manager, or… Would Pence dine with Ivanka? Or KellyAnne? Or are they too relegated to second class citizens. For that matter, how would he ever even interview a woman. With a chaperone? It means that female reporters, also, would be cut out of his information flow, now and in the past.”

So how do we get over the monumental hill of sexism in the workplace? As Elsesser told The Atlantic, it’s simple, just normalize it.  “If you always saw men and women meeting together for dinner, people wouldn’t see it as suspicious,” she said."

 Or maybe the guy just can't trust himself. I mean we all know how those right-wing men roll.

Anyway, it was Pence who cast the deciding/dividing vote in the senate today, and I am sure that his wife of over 30 years was not by his side when he voted to ruin the lives of millions of other women.

*Pic from plannedparenthood.org.







    

"American Intellectuals"

I was going to write something about the politics of the Supreme Court decision on Thursday, but, quite frankly, I am sick of politics in this country and all the players who are involved with it.

Most of us who know how America really works, and how the political parties function, understand that it doesn't matter who is in the White House or who controls the halls of congress. We know that real power in America comes from lobbyist and the people who can afford to pay them. Politicians who go to Washington need money to get elected and John Q. Public cannot afford to write a big enough check.

The sad truth of the matter is that most of our fellow citizens are extremely naive and are not in the least intellectually curious.  As a result, what we get are dimwitted sound bite politicians who are elected every year by dim witted intellectually lazy citizens. (The republican Governor of Louisiana says that he will ignore a federal law and not implement Obamacare in his state.)

Just think, playmates are now getting "Genius visas" to come to our country. Nothing against playmates, I am sure that some of them are really smart people, but think about that for a minute.

The right keeps screaming that if Obama wins November it will be the end of the world as we all know it. But with all due respect to Sarah Palin, Rush Limpboy and the FOX NEWS crowd, nothing will change. America will pretty much be the same sound bite celebrity driven place with a few wealthy people controlling our lives, and the rest of us wishing that we were them.

The beautiful thing about this American experiment is that every one of those folks in the 99% believes that with just a little hard work they too will be in that 1% some day. And they believe that only if certain people are in power will they have a chance of getting there. "Mitt Romney has a better chance of making me rich because he is rich." 

Finally, I know I said I wouldn't write about it, but I can't resist one aspect of this Obamacare decision by the supremes: the reaction of [right] wingnuts to the ruling. (Did you see representative Jean Schmidt's orgasmic reaction to the wrong news about Obamacare?)  

"On his radio show Thursday, conservative talk radio firebrand Michael Savage wondered whether Roberts’ epilepsy medication affected the chief justice’s cognition. “I’m going to tell you something that you’re not going to hear anywhere else, that you must pay attention to,” Savage said. “It’s well known that Roberts, unfortunately for him, has suffered from epileptic seizures. Therefore he has been on medication. Therefore neurologists will tell you that medication used for seizure disorders, such as epilepsy, can introduce mental slowing, forgetfulness and other cognitive problems. And if you look at Roberts’ writings you can see the cognitive dissociation in what he is saying,”
In a closed door meeting with House Republicans, Rep. Mike Pence likened the health care ruling to Sept. 11, Politico reported

Geraldo Rivera didn’t criticize Roberts as much as call him a mad genius. On Fox and Friends Friday morning, Geraldo said: “(Roberts) has gifted President Obama a poison pill. Republicans now can remember, unless something is done, that the Bush tax cuts also lapse at the end of the year. So here you have the largest tax increase and the increase coming from the expiration of the Bush tax cuts - he taxed us, he said he wouldn’t tax us, he taxed us. I think the Obama presidency hangs by a thread right now.”

Saying the Supreme Court decision “destroys Bush’s legacy,” dimmed conservative star Glenn Beck put his rhetoric where his online store is. He is selling screen-printed Roberts “coward” t-shirts for $30 a pop." [Source]

What's amazing is that our republic has managed to survive this long.