For the Hoosiers among us, please take a little time from your schedule to vote in tomorrow’s primaries. Polls are open 6am-6pm, so there is no excuse for not voting.
Category: News & Politics
Culture of Control
First, South Dakota outlaws abortion of any sort, though there may be exceptions for those who have been Napolied.
Next, Missouri attempted to cease funding for birth control for the poor. The legislation would have also prohibited state-funded agencies from referring those women to programs that could help them. Culture of life, my ass.
Now, Ohio would like to get in on the action. Rep. Tim Brinkman, bless his vile little heart, has introduced a bill that would make it a felony for a woman to obtain an abortion, or to leave the state to obtain one. Further, anyone who helped her obtain an abortion, or leave the state to obtain one, could be charged as well.
Even if such legislation is ultimately voted down, the mere fact that someone actually thought it might be a good idea is pretty damned disturbing. Folks like Mr. Brinkman and Mr. Napoli almost make me wish I believed in Hell.
Linkidinks and Bogglement
First, the Linkidinks:
- What every well dressed tank is wearing this spring: a tank cozy. (That’s for D, onna counta her post on subversive knitting projects.)
- Also, the Crochet Hyperbolic Coral Reef Project.
- For Ms. Lea, who ties funny knots.
- Halliburton is given yet another contract, this one for $385 million, to waste building immigrant detention centers in the US. Read it and weep. From Halliburton’s website (in pdf format):
- Via D, this most excellent reworking of I Am the Walrus, koo-koo-ka-chu.
- Ramen taste test.
- From the surreal files, a Yahoo news story about the role Yahoo has played in the jailing of Chinese dissidents. M’kaythen.
- From the Department of Duh, high gas prices are the result of corporate greed, not the price of crude oil.
- YouTube video of Indian street traffic. Amazing. It’s like anarchist ballet with cars. And, am I smoking crack, or is India where all good Festivas go to die?
- Does becoming involved in the Goth subculture protect kids from harm? Interesting, and not at all surprising. I just have to quote this bit, because it makes me all kinds of happy:
It is a strongly non-violent and accepting subculture.
Crazy and dysfunctional, yes, but not violent and not unaccepting. I think that was one of the most important parts of self-identifying as a freak when I was in high school and college. The freaks take all comers and have a live and let live philosophy. There’s a lot to be said for that.
- Lots of things bother me about Tom Cruise, but I’m amused that Katie took pain killers during the delivery.
- Speaking of The Tom, I’m thoroughly creeped out by the baby’s epithet “TomKitten.” It’s as if the wee one burst forth from her father’s forehead, fully armored. I believe the myth goes: It was prophesied that any child of The Tom’s would overshadow him, so when Katie became pregnant, The Tom ate her. Or maybe it was just the placenta. Anyway, he then got a thumping headache, and asked his publicist to cleave his skull in twain with an axe. Out popped baby Suri. Et voila, The Tom achieves solo male birth.
- More creepiness. I’ve long been bothered by the tone BushCo has been taking on the subject of Iran. I do not find this admission to be comforting.
The contract provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the United States, or to support the rapid development of new programs.
What “new programs” are they preparing to rapidly develop? Creepy!
Second, the Bogglement:
And then there’s this little gem from Slate, on The Medical Institute for Sexual Health. The Med Institute has received a $200,000 grant from the CDC to create a program to teach medical students about sexual health. Sounds innocuous enough, right? Only, the guy who heads the Med Institute is W. David Hager, a misogynist who raped and abused his wife. He was also the author of the report that is implicated in the FDA’s decision to not give OTC status to emergency contraception. Nice guy, eh?
Anyway, according to Hager’s Med Institute’s mission statement, they believe that “the behavior choices necessary for optimal health are sexual abstinence for unmarried individuals and faithfulness within marriage.” Now, I realize that Our Malevolent Leader is all for keeping it in your pants unless you’re one of God’s chosen people, which is problematic on about a zillion levels. However, spewing ridiculous tripe like the above is not the way to bolster one’s position. Fortunately for Our Malevolent Leader, who had the foresight to leave nearly every child behind, they aren’t teaching logic in schools these days. If they were, then it would be patently obvious that married folk do not have a monopoly on faithfulness. The existence of a piece of paper, or lack thereof, cannot predict whether or not a person will screw around.
And don’t get me started on the “nonmarital pregnancy epidemic.” My ass. Again, a little piece of paper cannot predict whether or not someone will make a good parent. I realize they’d like us to think they’re referring to teen pregnancy, but if that was their true intent, they’d’ve said so. No, they mean exactly what they say. They don’t like uppity wimmins having babies on their own, onna counta we’ve got eeevil uteri and cannot be trusted with their operation.
The CDC has no business funding this sort of crap. Then again, we’re talking about a government that thinks that only married folks should be having Teh Sex. According to its new abstinence education guidelines, in order to be eligible for government grants, the group in question must teach that:
“Abstinence means voluntarily choosing not to engage in sexual activity until marriage. Sexual activity refers to any type of genital contact or sexual stimulation between two persons including, but not limited to, sexual intercourse. […] Throughout the entire curriculum, the term ‘marriage’ must be defined as ‘only a legal union between one man and one woman as a husband and wife, and the word ‘spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.'”
What that means is that they must teach kids that they shouldn’t have sex until they are married, and that only God’s Chosen People (those who aren’t Teh Gay), will be allowed to marry. If you are gay, too bad, so sad, no sex for you. I really cannot see why on earth our government should be allowed to pursue such an agenda. If they want to disseminate abstinence only information, fine. It isn’t an effective way to achieve their supposed goal, but in and of itself, it’s not a big deal. However, when it is used as a framework for teaching kids that there is something wrong with being not-straight, that’s another kettle of fishes.
But keeping dark is hateful
It’s not particularly fun to wake up at 4 am. It’s not particularly fun to have to leave for work at 5:15 am. About the only thing that is less fun is waking up at 3 am and leaving for work at 4:15 am. Daylight saving time, my ass! It wouldn’t be so bad if I could figure out how to change the clock in my car. I don’t really need to be reminded every morning that it is really 4:15, not 5:15. Talk about adding insult to injury. Worse is that it’s not even pretending to be dark out when I go to bed, which I also usually do at a ridiculously and obscenely early hour. Mitch Daniels has a lot to answer for.
Fucker.
Sometimes it’s depressing to be a tiny speck of pinko-blue swimming in a sea of red. I am finding this to be especially true at 3am.
Since I’m on the subject of things that make me cranky in the morning, I’d like to take this opportunity to discuss the accepted procedure for stopping at traffic lights and stop signs. I don’t know how they do things in Wisconsin, where Mr. CRV Driver is from, but here in Indiana we recommend stopping in front of the line. As in, all four tires of your car should not yet have crossed the aforementioned. That would be the exact opposite of having all four of your tires on the far side of the line. I’m just sayin’…
To the old dude who works for the parks department and drives a nearly invisible dark green Ford F-150, could you please either pick up the pace or stop driving on the bypass? Seriously. If you cannot go faster than 30mph, you really shouldn’t be driving where the speed limit is 55mph. I’ve almost rear-ended you multiple times, and I saw a gravel truck nearly go off the road this morning, trying to avoid flattening you.
To the person with the E tag who keeps snagging my parking spot: Are you made of money or something? How long do you intend to accumulate tickets, just so you can park in the A lot?
To the Herald Times delivery driver: What in the name of all that is holy do you think you’re doing? You do not (not!) deliver papers from the highway. This is the second time I’ve been stuck behind you as you’ve crept along, winging papers through the passenger side window onto the the ends of people’s driveways. Not cool.
That’s all from this week’s edition of the Rural Road Rage Diaries.
Oh, wait, I lie. There was one more. A red blinky light means S-T-O-P. It does not mean slow down a little bit. A blinky yellow light means slow down a bit, and proceed with care. Which is what I did, which is why I didn’t cream your ass when you barrelled through your blinky red light. Fuckwit.
Free Whores
Via Feministing, a letter from Republican Rep. Cynthia Davis on how only sluts use contraceptive. Obviously, that’s all sorts of wrong for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that her underlying premise–that single women who have sex are whores–sucks. But, what made me choke on my PB&J was this gem:
When I was listening to the debate last week I wondered what kind of man would want to enjoy free sex and then expect her to provide for her own contraceptives? These are the kind of men who want free whores. Any man who would be so low life as that does not deserve to have any woman love him. Smart women will stay away from men who use them and abuse them.
What on earth does that mean? Seriously. Does she not realize that married women, too, are generally left with the responsibility of providing contraception? That’s an awfully broad brush she’s wielding. And, what exactly is a free whore, anyway?
And then there’s her baffling statement that state provided birth control for single women will increase the birth rate. WTF? Yes, I realize that it’s incredibly immoral to be poor. I also realize that poor folks should be punished for their transgressions. And I also, too, double-plus-as-well realize that single women who have sex should be pilloried in the town square. After all, they’re whores, right? Um, no, they’re not. They’re human beings who have every bit as much right to have access to physical intimacy and decent health care as do UberMoral Rich Folks.
The answer is not to take away access to abortion, and then to take away access to the means to keep from becoming pregnant. Good grief! No, if people like Cynthia Davis actually cared about women and children and all that “family values” stuff that they like to rabbit on and on and on about, then they’d be looking for solutions that
- Provide for the care of the people who are already here. That means none of that ridiculous “poor mothers don’t deserve welfare” crap. Of course they deserve welfare, and so do their kids. You can’t help people to become contributing members of society by taking away their access to adequate schooling, health care, nutrition, housing, etc.
- They’d trust women to make their own choices about whether or not they want to become pregnant. Period. That means access to birth control and to abortions. Because, if you can’t trust a woman to make those sorts of decisions, you certainly can’t trust her to raise a child./li>
The entire letter can be found here. But, I warn ya’, it ain’t pretty. Aside from the hemorrhaging from her logic centers, the woman obviously did not learn grammar from Sister Dominica.
A Culture of Life
Am I the only one who visualizes a petri dish full of really bad germs whenever I hear that phrase? Ebola, anyone?
Ebola Virus
Instant Review: Iron Jawed Angels
The author of one of the blogs I regularly read–I can’t remember which one–recently mentioned watching Iron Jawed Angels. I immediately put it at the top of my Netflix queue and watched it last night.
First, Hilary Swank is amazing. I don’t know why that always surprises me, because she’s consistently good. Maybe it’s that I can’t get over that she was on Beverly Hills 90210? In any event, her portrayal of Alice Paul was most excellent.
Alice Paul, 1919
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/hec2008008828/
I’m not going to give a synopsis of the movie or the historical events it’s based on. Better ones are available on-line. A couple of things leapt out at me, though, because of things that are happening in the world right now.
First, the illegalization of abortion in South Dakota (the governor signed the bill into law yesterday, and it will go into effect on July 1). Eighty-five years after women won the right to vote, we’re still being treated like chattel. You can watch or listen[1] to a clip of SD Senator Napoli, a creepy man who spends way too much time fantasizing about virgins, rape, sodomy, and shot-gun weddings, wax poetically about the good ol’ days when women knew their places.
BILL NAPOLI: A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.
If you are a woman and you live in South Dakota and you are raped and you become pregnant, you’d better be a god fearing virgin. You must also prove that you had a particularly brutal rape, as explicitly defined by Napoli (that’s right, you don’t get to decide whether or not your particular rape was brutal). Otherwise, you’ll be forced to carry the baby to term. Worse, Sen. Napoli also wants to force you to marry your attacker.
BILL NAPOLI: When I was growing up here in the wild west, if a young man got a girl pregnant out of wedlock, they got married, and the whole darned neighborhood was involved in that wedding. I mean, you just didn’t allow that sort of thing to happen, you know? I mean, they wanted that child to be brought up in a home with two parents, you know, that whole story. And so I happen to believe that can happen again.
And that’s just rape victims. Those brazen hussies who have the temerity to have unsanctioned sex (you know, the kind that occurs out of wedlock), and who become pregnant, will have no option but to go out of state for an abortion or to carry the pregnancy to term. If folks like Sen. Napoli get their way, those women might also be forced to marry the men they had sex with, whether or not that’s in their long-range plans or even in their best interests.
What it boils down to is control. Women should be virginal and angelic. If they are not, they should be punished. Otherwise, why on earth would the chastity of the victim or the brutality of the rape be a consideration in whether or not a resultant pregnancy can be aborted? If women’s wants and needs were of importance, wouldn’t the law treat all pregnancies that result from coerced sex equally? Not that I believe there ought to be any moral strictures on whether or not a pregnancy can be aborted. If women were truly autonomous, and not just incubators, then we’d be trusted to make those decisions for ourselves. It’s not like you can walk up to someone on the street and demand their blood, kidney, or bone marrow. And those things would potentially save a human being that is here, now. Why should we value a bundle of cells more highly than we do adult lives?
Second, hunger strikes. This is also a control issue. Hunger strikes are a last resort for those who have no voice. The thought that even that would be taken away, in an effort to halt criticism of the way the US is dealing with prisoners (sorry, “enemy combattants”), is gut-wrenching. Even though force feeding is physically and mentally tortuous, hunger strikers at Guantanamo are routinely force fed. The only means of protest those prisoners have is being taken away from them by the US government, in an effort to control them. Onna count of we don’t want our public image damaged. Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it’s a little late for that. The time for protecting the country’s public image was back before it started rounding up everyone and his brother for looking, or being accused of looking, suspicious.
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[1] The relevant portion is about 2/3 into the stream, but don’t watch/listen unless you’ve got a strong stomach, because the way he gets off on describing his ideal of the perfect brutal rape is just plain squicky.
Better Late than Never
It can be difficult to be liberally minded in a red state. The good news is that Hoosiers finally seem to be coming to their senses. According to the article from the Indy Star:
Only 37 percent of those surveyed last week think Bush is doing a good job as president, while 56 percent disapprove.
…
The president’s approval rating equals the 37 percent approval rating Hoosiers gave President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, back in August 1994. And the rating mirrors the national view of the president. A recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll showed the president’s approval rating nationwide at 38 percent.
I do feel a small bit of pity for some of those who supported him. They got sold a pig in a poke. For those who continue to support him, it must be hard work trying make themselves believe in The Man Behind the Curtain.
It Begins in South Dakota
And just when I was thinking this day would be an improvement over yesterday (it’s Friday for me, and Survivor is on tonight), there is this little news gem (via Feministing): South Dakota’s senate has passed an absolutely fucktacular piece of legislation that totally bans abortion. The only exception is if the mother’s life is at risk There are no exceptions for rape or incest, or for the protection of the mother’s mental or physical heath and well being. The state’s governor, who is of the anti-choice persuasion, still has to sign it into law, but there is absolutely no doubt that he will. The ramifications of this go way beyond women in South Dakota being unable to obtain in-state abortions. This is a stepping stone to the overturn of Roe v. Wade. It also opens the door for all sorts of squicky laws aimed at controlling the freedoms of women. Cuz, yaknow, we’re just big ol’ incubators with feet.
Un-fucking-believable.
Why Wal-Mart Sucks, Reason #8759
Terre Haute is getting a new Walmart store. I get the impression that most folks there were originally in favor of this, but they aren’t so happy about it now. Apparently, Walmart gave local contractors only five days to bid on the project, which is a ludicrously short amount of time, so the contract ended up going to a company from Missouri. Poof! A metric ass-load of jobs gone, just like that. It gets worse, though. Based on pay stubs obtained by a local news station, the company that won the contract is not deducting state or county taxes from its workers’ pay checks. By law, out of state workers must have state and county taxes deducted from their pay. Because that money isn’t being deducted, a sizable chunk of tax revenue that would have been received from local workers will now be lost.
Terre Haute really can’t afford to lose that money. A representative from one of the local unions was interviewed. He said that if his company had gotten the contract, not only would the local tax money not be lost, but his company A) uses local workers and B) donates a percentage of their profits to local charities. That means that money would be going into the pockets of local workers, charities, and government. But, because an out-of-state company won the contract, it won’t.
That’s just one of the many hidden costs of supporting a business like Walmart.
red paper boat 