Maybe We Will Just Protect Ourselves

 

I tell this about myself because its true and a little weird, but when I was small, my dad taught me how to hook my fingers up and around an eyeball in its socket--just in case I ever had to. I knew what a xyphoid process was at six years old. I knew where to drive the heel of my hand into a human nose. I was taught that I didn't have the physical strength advantage in life, so I had to have the will. I was taught that you have to walk in awareness. I was taught you watch your drink. I was taught to carry improvised weapons. I was taught to see the world in terms of potential improvised weapons.

I was taught this because some boys never get told what they should never try. Or get told but don't really learn it. (You don't use your knee--it's inexact. You grab them by it. You can squeeze and disrupt a generation of losers. And I never had to do any of that. Not once. Because it's really only a small percentage of men who are actual monsters--most are reasonable and not actual sociopaths. I like men, really. They are interesting enough and some have valuable skills. They care for the people around them and often are smarter than they think they are. It's a confidence issue. When you are told to value muscle over brain, you know.) 

The Un-American Project 2025

 

Heritage Foundation president celebrates Supreme Court presidential immunity ruling: "We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be" https://t.co/ndMJlNlUKH

— Media Matters (@mmfa) July 3, 2024

Look at this Bond villain bullshit: "which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be." What he's saying right there is, will remain bloodless if the left lays back and lets it happen. Because I guess it's fun to threaten a whole Revolution. Tea Party people. I swear. They really want to see themselves proudly fighting to--

Install a monarchy? Undo the first American Revolution? Institute a lot of Christian nationalist and white supremacist rubbish that the majority of Americans don't want? 

Um--exactly. And there are a lot of former Trump Administration officials supporting this blueprint for chaos. 

Anyway, when I saw that term, "bloodless", all I could think of was 1/6 and the testimony of a Capitol police officer that she was slipping in people's blood that day.  They thought they were re-creating 1776. What they were doing was insurrection. What the 'bloodless" Project 2025 document boasts is undoing the American experiment of a government of, for and by the people--unless those people are conservative activists.

Kitchen Karen is Back With a Handmaiden Origin Story

 

Today, I’m proud to introduce the More Opportunities for Moms to Succeed (MOMS) Act along with @SenMarcoRubio, @SenKevinCramer, and a group of @SenateGOP colleagues.

You can learn more here: https://t.co/L1mZmoYoQ5 pic.twitter.com/kAmX2Up7Yr

— Senator Katie Boyd Britt (@SenKatieBritt) May 9, 2024

Do you want the government to track your periods and judge you based on the length of time your uterus can hold a very sacred fetus? Would you like to be referred to a totally not-a-whole-bunch-of-doctors crisis group telling you how to just stay pregnant until you pop....something out, regardless of your whole ability to raise or care for a baby, and also deal with whatever the physical/emotional, and/or-financial state you are in when you do give forth your sprog?

If that is the incredibly weird and uncomfortable level of government/religious oversight of your very personal business you would deeply prefer not to have--please vote Democrat, thank you.

OK, I have more to say about this:

An Alibi, A Shovel-Buddy and a Surveillance System Walked into a Bar

 

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson admitted that he and his son monitored each other’s porn intake in a resurfaced clip from 2022 https://t.co/THNyCkttcw

— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) November 5, 2023

I'm just a normal basic human, and I don't care to know anything about my parents' porn habits. I did learn that adult humans had down-there hair because my dad used to hide his skin mags under the bathroom sink when I was like, five, but he corrected that.  And I never really had to think about that again. Much. 

But anyway, this news is freaky to me: that's some serious boundary issues they've got there, in my humble estimation. But why is the father in this situation entrusting his browser history to his son? I can appreciate a parent having some level of curiosity about what their kids are up to online, that they aren't becoming white supremacists or bullying other kids for being gay or joining a cult, but the screwed-up thing for me this is like co-opting your kid to be able to vouch for your own version of No-Nut-November-October. They are an alibi. You can say your kid is not viewing porn. And as far as they know, your kid can say the same about you, for some reason? 

It Comes Down to Hurting Women

 

A Florida woman, unable to get an abortion in her state, carried to term a baby who had no kidneys. Her son died in her arms shortly after he was born, just as her doctors had predicted he would. https://t.co/f9kwtQ4dBH

— CNN (@CNN) May 3, 2023

The so-called "pro-life" movement isn't that at all. There was no good reason for her to carry this doomed child to this outcome--only a stubborn idea that being born is better than not, even when biology stubbornly also insists, sometimes--no. 

If we look at the snitching-based law in Texas that allows anyone to sue a person who obtains an abortion or aids and abets it--here's where we end up. The worst human ever gets to use this law to further abuse someone who certainly does not owe him offspring. The reality of what anti-abortion legislation is for becomes obvious. 

It's about control. It's about telling someone who is female-bodied they have no rights the state needs to respect. Women are shuttled from pillar to post as lawyers argue whether they are close enough to death to be given reproductive care. The law that says they can seek care to save their lives is disregarded for the sake of the anti-abortionists' imaginary fetal friends. 

We have states where women are told to wait even in a parking lot until they are close to death before they can seek care. 

The reality of their situation needs such careful documentation. Like once again, in Florida, where a rape victim needs a paper trail to prove her situation. Consider a minor child, a victim of incest. How easy is it for that person to document what happened to them? A person economically dependent on their rapist (a situation a groomer/abuser certainly tries to create). A person stalked, threatened with further violence based on their actions? 

There are people who can't easily demonstrate they are raped or even physically imperiled by their pregnancy until their situation is literally them--at death's door. And this is not where someone should be compelled by law to be for their care.  No one should be so compelled to save their own life, or negotiate the euthanasia of their own child, by way of a protracted argument in a biologically time-limited situation. We need to give this space to them. It should not be a debate.

The RNC is Taking a Look at Itself

 

In the wake of the "red wave" that wasn't, the RNC is taking a hard look at itself and has commissioned an advisory council to take a look into what happened. On tap--Blake Masters, Unabomber appreciator who just lost his US Senate race in AZ, and Tony Perkins, hate group leader. Among the things they will be looking into growing the party with minority outreach and introducing new voices. 

I can see a bit of a problem there. 

Are they going to get suburban women by messaging that the party is open to entertaining banning birth control or minorities by implying diversity is suspect? Are they going to attract LGBT people or allies with...well, any of it?

I think it's not off-base to suggest that the Dobbs decision and candidate quality were key to Republican losses and that losing with independent voters might have something to do with the paucity of moderate voices. The look they need to take shouldn't really be too long or hard--they just need to look into the right mirror.

I don't think I want what's best for the GOP, of course. They deserve Mike Lindell. 

Defining the GOP

 

Is that a pizza menu Rep. Elise Stefanik holds in her hand in the picture above? Why, no, it is the Republican party's plan to define itself ahead of the midterms! Many GOP legislators, we are assured, worked long and hard to boil down what the party plans to do in their Commitment to America, and while I think what's on offer is long on goals and short on policy specifics, I can already envision what the party will do, because they have been telling us.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, I think, has done the best job of defining the party: it's about a federal abortion ban.  He has literally said the words "defines our party" regarding this issue, and I sure as heck don't disbelieve him, because even if they can't manage it federally, you can be sure GOP governors and state houses are ready to exercise their "states' rights" to take away the rights of people who can become pregnant. 

They have goals regarding crime and inflation, and also oversight of the White House. I think we can predict fairly well what House Republicans would do with their opportunity--pretty much nothing useful for the economy (tax cuts for the rich and "cutting waste" really won't accomplish much) and maybe they are only concerned about crime regarding some people, but as long as Biden is president, they have a great incentive to not make things better and to, I dunno. Try impeaching him for something. Anything, really. 

They say they want to protect Social Security and Medicare, and Sens. Rick Scott and Ron Johnson have given us a good window into their thinking about that--they are going to destroy the village to save it. 

From the skimpy pamphlet that GOP House leadership brandished, to the video that contained a lot of stock footage from...Russia (Really? A national party won't foot the bill to contract a videographer to shoot B-roll out in Indiana or wherever?), you can really see the loving, thoughtful work that has gone into their messaging. 

Even the comments of their probably-planted concern-mommy let you really know what they are all about:

"Critical race theory; diversity, equity, and inclusion; gender identity ... anti-bullying programs ... These are all Marxist-style programs targeting our children."

— A mom at the House GOP's "Commitment to America" agenda rollout, as Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy nods along pic.twitter.com/AiLhVvX07f

— The Recount (@therecount) September 23, 2022

So, you understand, they will defeat classroom communism with a commitment to be....pro-bullying, anti-inclusion, and definitely crack down on that diversity and equity stuff. You bet! In sum, f you want a party that stands for culture war, inaction on kitchen table issues, the Big Lie, book-banning and making kids carry their rapists' baby to term, well, the GOP have well and truly demonstrated who they are! 

There's Something Right with Kansas

 

I believe the idea was simple enough--put a referendum on altering the Kansas state constitution with respects to abortion on the primary ballot in a red state in a midterm year and let the natural conservatism and low turnout do the rest. 

Yeeeeaaaah, that's not what happened. Instead, there was very strong voter turnout against that measure. The somewhat Orwellian named "Value Them Both" bill (which is more like, "Value them Both but While the Pregnant Person is Pregnant, Value the Fetus Just a Bit More") failed. Despite mushy-sounding language that made the proposition sound like it was affirming rights in the state constitution and preventing the funding of abortions in a way that was not being proposed, activism and clear messaging hammered home the idea that opting for "Yes" meant opening the door to an abortion ban.

In the post-Roe landscape, as people come more and more to look at the stark cost of denying reproductive freedom, these bans are not popular, because the burden of unwanted or unviable pregnancies without the remedy of abortion access is undue. 

Preserving rights, giving people choices, respecting freedom of conscience, and recognizing that laws should be humane because they are made for humans, and not the other way around, should be simple common sense. In a world where anti-abortion figures enthuse that 13 year olds can do "phenomenal" things as parents, it only becomes too clear that so-called pro-life activists are living in a dangerous fantasy that ignores the messiness of human events, where reasonable people understand all too well that children should not have to be phenomenal, and adult humans should be free to make choices that affect them physically, financially, and impact their whole families. 

Social conservatives are in denial that reserving freedom of choice is popular, because most people have not willfully blinded themselves to the realities of a heart-breaking miscarriage, the denial of life-saving care, the economic strain, or the simple need to let people have reproductive freedom because forced labor is wrong. 

To me, this says that anti-abortion extremists are already on the back foot and need to be booted. There's no good reason not to lean in on letting people know: one party respects your rights, and the other party wants to take them away, and make some pastor your private parts policeman. Make it crystal clear that it's abortion rights today, birth control tomorrow. If SCOTUS wanted this in the hands of the people--the people will need to decide--and if it's in the hands of the state, then it must be clear who needs to run the state senates, houses or assemblies as well. 

Republicans Don't Care About Your Family

 

Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg had sharp words for the Republicans opposing a bill codifying the right to same-sex marriages, urging them to support the legislation's passage in the Senate after it won bipartisan House approval. https://t.co/mBKJi45Egb

— ABC News (@ABC) July 24, 2022

Republicans demonstrated with their vote in the House against supporting same-sex or interracial marriages that they don't care about all of our American families. After all, House Republicans also failed to support access to contraception.  They don't care if lack of access to abortion means that a pregnant person dies, or that pregnant people can't move freely across the country to access their right to bodily autonomy according to their own conscience. 

It has to be finally admitted--they don't care about your family. Republicans chatted quite comfortably with a gay man and then right afterwards told him his family did not matter to them. They don't care about his family, and his young children. They don't care about his parental rights and those of his spouse. 

They would not care about your family, that you made via IVF, because it offends the anti-abortion people. I want you to know that. 

If you are Jewish or gay, they would probably prefer you not adopt because you aren't the right sort of people to raise kids. Marjorie Taylor Greene considers adoptive parents "fake" and thinks they are a danger to children. 

I've Seen the Future and It Is Mother

 

The genuinely stoked millennial in the selected picture is Trump-supported state senate candidate Jackie Eubanks, who does not think women should have sex outside of marriage or for other than procreative purposes and definitely should not have birth control.  Birth control is outside of God's moral order, which I guess he told her this one time at Bible camp, and now welp. Also too, you apparently can't have a successful society outside of Christianity. Sorry, most of world history. You are apparently entirely wrong for having existed outside of Miss Thang's experience. 

I'm being mean, but mostly because this moral scold is young enough to be one of my not-even youthful indiscretions. You are not young enough to be the welp of me and tell me when, with whom and for actual progeny!? I am going to fuck. Oh no. Jacky and her sock puppet Jesus are not the boss of my vagina. They can mind their own business. 

But Trumpism is apparently going full metal-mama on us. Matt Schlapp's response to whether Great Replacement Theory is a thing is to tie it to abortion--why don't we just stop white ladies from aborting the future? The white future. The future that isn't reliant on what Steve King spoke of as "somebody else's babies".  (Right up in Hungary where I guess democracy is dead and long live Orbanism? Anti gay, anti-minority, paranoid, declining? ) 

The answer to "white genocide" (which isn't happening, unless you count suicide by desperation and incel by having extremely bad internet habits--but none of that is imposed by the outside) is supposed to be women wanting to have children, but none of this culture is making me even think for a moment I missed out by not making white babies for this shithole culture. Whiteness isn't enough and making kids would be too much for me. Writing is my babies. People who don't read wouldn't understand that and that's why my blog isn't for them. And people who never woke up and cried that they had to get out of bed don't understand why I never wanted kids that I would have to make my body do shit for everyday when it was enough I did anything for me.

Fascism is making reproduction-capable people into baby factories and telling them they need to be happy they have a job.  It is telling disabled people they have to produce to be considered valuable. It is saying something is so special about motherhood that rejecting it is a sin. I sometimes wonder if I might be a good dad-figure to someone--I have lots of drinking and fighting and sportsmanship lessons to bestow. But the government should not tell people how to make their families. They should not tell people with uteruses they have to be mothers anymore than people with penises need to be fathers. We need to do these things for ourselves. And race is irrelevant to what makes a society--any society that hates and micromanages people is already fucked. 

It's Only A Hundred Years or so...

 

The more I think about the idea, present in Justice Alito's leaked draft of the decision to overturn Roe about the idea of rights "deeply rooted" in US tradition, the more I think about how women have really only had the right to vote for a hundred years give or take, and how he cited a man who didn't think marital rape was a crime and had witches executed. (It seems like I was just talking about how "witchcraft" and repro rights were related....) 

In just over a hundred years, part of feminist work has been not just to assert our right to manage our reproduction by way of birth control, but to even fight for the concept of consent with respect to our bodies themselves--to not be raped, to be made child brides, to be sterilized, and are still incomplete. 

I have a good idea what a step back would mean for us. We can't take one step back. Not one. 

More Than the Sum of Our Parts

 

It remains astonishing to me that the party that tried to make an issue of "Define a woman" never had an answer for what a woman is, themselves. They assumed it was easy--like the definition of obscenity as pronounced by Potter Stewart, they would know one when they saw one. But maybe there is a drawback to viewing people in the gross anatomical sense. Is a woman the wife of her husband, as Margorie Taylor Greene insists? So, are nuns only defined as wives of Christ? But what of Buddhist nuns? Is a woman a person who can make babies as Josh Hawley insists? Having never made babies, am I less a woman for that? 

We are more than the sum of our parts. A man, identifying as male, is not the less male for not having a penis through disease or injury--so then why would we consider the accident of genetic sex characteristics necessarily binding on a person identified as female at birth who identifies as male? 

Oh, Does Amy Coney Barrett Have Kids?

 

Amy Coney Barrett is the least popular Supreme Court nominee in modern times#ACB https://t.co/BHPrb3zKgB

— Raw Story (@RawStory) October 13, 2020

It really feels like after today's hearings, it would be ammmmaaaaaazzzzzing if more people brought up that she has seven whole young humans that she's looking after not including the big lug who is the head of her household, making her exactly comfortable in a party of nine (See!) and wouldn't it be boss indeed like hot sauce if we talked some more about the part where the church plays as much a part as her children do in her worldview? (Has she any kitchen table commentary to add, or is this too much?) Gosh, I would love more of this rich discourse about her ID politics. 

 Oh wait. I would not. See, I already know like anyone else does where this person is on Roe, and I don't trust her re: Obergefell, Griswold, Lawrence v Texas, I think she'd be Shelby all day every day, and I don't even trust her with Brown v BOE. 

 It really for some reason (my lifelong feminism, probably) annoys me a lot that people are using her being a mom to say she would necessarily support people's rights, etc. All kinds of people have kids. It doesn't require a license or anything. Would we use having fathered many children to be a sign of a man's fitness for a job? (Unless the answer is "sperm donor"--I don't think so.) So why pretend that Barrett's seven children make her less likely to rule against the ACA than Justice Scalia's nine children did? 

 I'm still hung up on the likelihood of her potential inevitability though, so I agree with Sen. Whitehouse, it would do immeasurable damage to the legitimacy of the court if she did not recuse in the event that Trump takes the election results to court (as did a previous campaigner, George W. Bush--and for that matter, Kavanaugh better abstain as well--or really the whole court should just tell Trump's orange peel ass he's on his own.).

I'm Not Saying Roy Moore's Attorney is a Scoundrel, But...

Roy Moore's Attny. Trenton Garmon suggests Ali Velshi's "background" would help him understand why Moore would date underage women — @AliVelshi is from Canada pic.twitter.com/e061tiz9Nx

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) November 15, 2017

I think the amazing thing about this is I'm trying to imagine the POV of a person who thinks it is OK to reference someone's apparent nationality of origin to presuppose they are capable of understanding the moral relativity of perving on underage girls, because, you know. Like arranged child marriages n' shit. It is possible this individual has really failed to ever leave the bubble of his own culture this hard? I almost want to see how this spectacular televised bigot-fail even made it into production from a somewhat-educated individual's head, and I just can't.

Look, deep down, I try to not be the liberal coastal elitist queer working-class anti-racist commuter-college BA having atheist that red state folk might have difficulty understanding. And yet, such is my life. I get I'm not accessible on all levels to all readers. 

But this guy is amazeballs opaque to me. Here's an actual site his lawfirm owns-- botchedabortionlawyer.com. It's different. He claims to care about female-bodied people's abortion experiences and admits that the harm from the procedure is rare, but is stating:

If you, a friend or loved one has been the victim of a botched abortion, we are here to help. Our firm has extensive experience in preparing and litigating cases on behalf of injured victims. We will evaluate your claim free of charge and there will be no fee unless we collect compensation on your behalf.

Often times the mother who consented to the abortion is not even aware that her unborn child may have had a heartbeat, could feel pain or even had brainwave activity at the time the doctor ended the child’s life. Despite many state’s requiring a sonogram be done and/or a waiting period complied with, often times the abortion clinic staff and medical doctor are more concerned with performing the abortion rather than informing the mother or ensuring that the conditions are sanitary and to the appropriate standard of care. Others viewed sonogram pictures of their child which were nearly unreadable and others were subject to unsanitary conditions such as unclean rooms following prior procedures, often times against numerous state law.

Look at this. "State's" with an unnecessary apostrophe, and "numerous state law" not being plural? How do people alleging to be professionals at law, making their living from words, not try harder at advertising themselves as familiar with the language they are supposedly arguing cases in? It seems like the specificity of the URL "botched abortion lawyer" indicates that they have a specialty in weird and rare Kermit Gosnell-like conditions, but these are in fact exactly that. Weird and rare. Also, I have to wonder about the "heartbeat" and "sonogram" language, because I do not believe that any woman has ever not known what she wanted an abortion for, or failed to understand what that fetus was, or would be persuaded that the presence of a heartbeat or a picture of the fetus would necessarily be more than an annoyance. This is the fake abortion clinic level of concern about women's choice and health.

So--he's defending a person alleged to have sexually harassed or assaulted six or so people as a person who would sort of whaambulance-chase mostly non-existent abortion regretters? Yeah, this is the right guy, alright. I do not understand how this is the attorney of someone trying to establish they have their shit sufficiently together to be a US Senator.

Hobby Lobby Must Give Back Ancient Arts'n'Crafts

There's something a bit curious, to my mind, about the story regarding Hobby Lobby making purchases of over 5,000 Middle Eastern artifacts in some dodgy deals resulting in the company having to pay a $3 million fine and give up the artifacts. It makes a kind of awkward statement about what ethics the business has.

After all, this was the company that made the argument that they could not possibly provide insurance that included birth control to their employees, because some of those employees might turn around and...obtain birth control. I find that argument fascinating in light of this purchase of looted antiquities, because surely, they could not have been unaware that much of this sort of merchandise is not merely plunder--but dealt by terrorist groups to fund, you know, more terrorism.

Ah, Vixen, you might sigh, you're comparing IUD's to IED's.  To which I could only respond, "No duh."

Democrats Should Hold Up Neil Gorsuch

Sen. Ted Cruz: "The Democrats are engaged right now in unprecedented partisan obstruction" https://t.co/UYpqI3w42L https://t.co/rNBruSGDF9

— CNN (@CNN) February 1, 2017

President Trump has named Judge Neil Gorsuch of the US Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit as his SCOTUS pick, which, to my mind, should not have ever been Trump's pick to make. The Supreme Court Justice his pick would be replacing, Justice Antonin Scalia, passed on in February of last year, and the popularly twice-elected president in office at the time was Barack Obama. By all recognized norms, Merrick Garland should have got a vote. Even a "yes" or "no" vote. He didn't.

So now, we find ourselves with Republicans who are soooooo mad, you guys, at the "unprecedented partisan obstruction" of even things like delaying a vote on Sen. Sessions for AG, or a boycott on voting for HHS pick Tom Price, well, what about how Republicans performed regarding confirming AG Loretta Lynch, or how about that Gina McCarthy boycott for EPA?  

Yeah, there is exactly nothing unprecedented about what Democrats are doing, or thinking of doing, with respects to people Trump wants to round out his Administration's universe with. The Republicans gave President Obama constant obstructionism.  They were ready to say that if Hillary Clinton became president, they would block her pick, because it had already been established that the court could run on eight justices. Their justification for blocking Obama's pic was that it was an election year. (There is nothing in the Constitution or any historical precedent backing this up.) They said things like, let the "will of the people decide" who gets to pick the next SCOTUS Justice.

Oh well. I guess the court is able to bang on with eight cylinders. The current occupant of the White House wasn't the popularly-elected choice. And anyhow, Trump has already filed for the 2020 presidential campaign, meaning his entire term is technically "campaign season".

Also this bunny has a pancake on his head:

so Trump's pick is obviously invalid.  And Gorsuch's point of view clearly has church all up in our state, and I never like to see that. So I say let's give him a miss, hm?

UPDATE: Is this for real?

I never have gotten the hang of Young Republicanism. But it isn't really the most fortunate quote to endorse for a future in jurisprudence, is it?  (Although most everyone goes through a pirate stage when they are young I guess.)

A Tale of Two Speeches

It makes a kind of sense that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton gave speeches to two very different groups this Friday--they are two very different candidates and they do not substantially share a worldview. Donald Trump spoke in front of the Faith and Freedom Conference, where he was protested (because I think he might actually being paying protesters at this point to attract cameras and further the idea that he is an exciting and dangeous candidate, if you want to know what sort of things I think about this weird Potemkin campaign)  Hillary Clinton spoke in front of Planned Parenthood, the embattled reproductive health provider that has faced actual existential threats from the very sort of people who attend the Faith and Freedom Conference.

That right there strikes me as very different! For what it's worth, the Faith and Freedom shindy is an event at which a sitting US Senator who isn't even especially known as a firebrand suggested that it was funny to pray for President Obama's death--a joke which isn't even especially new. It's also a nice place for small-child hijacker and fetal snuff porn aficionado Carly Fiorina to assert that she is a feminist--in what way I guess we just have to imagine--who does not support Hillary Clinton. Well slap my ass and call me cynical! I could have called that one, Carly Obvious. (She can go sit next to Jill Stein and they can chat about how Hillary is a bad mother.)  Trump made people wait for his insubstantial Telepromptered speech, where he mostly avowed how he would support Christian Americans and appoint pro-life judges.

On the other hand, Hillary Clinton gave a speech in front of Planned Parenthood, and talked about how reproductive justice is a part of human rights. She understood the economic, social, and government policy implications of women taking charge of our bodies and reproductive rights. That means a lot to me. She understands that the personal is political. She represents a part of that movement where we as women came of age knowing that our very bodies were not assumed to be our own, but the possessions of men, or government, or churches. And where women were raised to accept that decisions should be made on our behalf for us, because our lady-brains shouldn't be trusted with making the choices that as adult women, we needed to make for our very own survival and for the success of our own children.  The ideas, after all, that were expressed by folks at the event Trump spoke at. She is keeping score of how our rights as women and our ability to access reproductive justice is regularly clipped by religious right haters.

She gets it--Trump never would. He gives his lip service to the religious right as an obligation to his party--but I think Clinton opposes it as I do--because it is specifically harmful to me and the people I love. This matters. It matters an awful lot.

What Ever Set Him Off?

So, let me get this straight, a woman-beater and accused rapist with a history of antisocial activity shoots a bunch of people and now claims he saw atrocities and is a "warrior for babies"? Hm. Seems like a heap of murderin' cancels out his moral high road, but at least we understand what the problem with him is now.

The pro-life movement is anything but "pro-life". And it gave this fool the idea that he could combine his hatred of women's autonomy with his general enjoyment of the feeling of doing violent shit. And now he thinks that is a good reason to have been shooting people.

Was it something to do with watching lots of fetus snuff porn videos and people talking past the idea that pregnancy is a condition that adult people may not be able to reconcile with their actual fully-realized-human lives? Because when someone talks about 1st trimester fetuses as "babies", I always bite my lip the way you do when a toddler says "mines". No little guy, "mine" is never pluralized. And no, big fella, what's happening in someone else's uterus has nothing to do with you.

al-Taqiyya Ted Cruz and the "Never Would I Ever"

 

A few weeks ago, Senator Cruz made some comments regarding Islam that made me laugh a little bit. He said that there was a philosophy in Islam that encouraged jihadis to lie for the sake of their holy war, to the unbelievers. It made me laugh, because I already know he's on about al-Taqiyya, because right-wingers always are, and it's sort of like "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing". In Northern Ireland, at a "hedge school" a priest at one time might have told you, "Sure and I'm not a Catholic--and if I were, I'd never tell you." It also made me smile because in the culture war, your hard-core religious righty is certainly not above the odd fib.

 

So it was only a matter of time before Ted Cruz got caught in a couple of these pious fibs--call them "Christianist Taqiyya", himself. For one, deeply amusing thing, in response to the recent shootings, he said he never met any pro-life advocate who was in favor of violent means.

 

Huh. Because as I've pointed out myself, he welcomed an endorsement from Troy Newman of Operation Rescue, who most certainly did advocate violent means. Is he perhaps utterly unaware of the body of work of Neal Horsley? The attacks against abortion clinics and doctors has been constant and sustained. He doesn't know that? His pretending to not know that there are extremist voices out there is peculiar, and most certainly wrong.

 

Robert Dear, himself, expressed admiration for the group known as Army of God--the sort of extremist Christian ID group I've been assured only "lu-lus" associate with. Be that as it may, your rifle-packing lu-lu in this country can be quite the dangerous and completely grotesque person. Dear's history of unchecked assertions of rage, particularly against women, were warning signs aplenty that he was bad news, but he was always let go. Domestic violence, rape? Meh. He believed in forgiveness, and he got it

 

But I find more knee-slappable (because less violence-involving) Cruz's assertion that never was the right wing ever involved in trying to end birth control. Jiminy Crickets, no! Why, they were never the "condom-police" because "rubbers" were available in bathrooms when he went to college. (In Princeton--not the restrooms, that is actually terrible declassee, but I understand in Harvard dorms, this was possibly true. But note the use of the term "rubbers". Wow, man, is that what the hepcats of his era called prophylactics or what?) But that's just gassing about the one kind of birth control that exists for male-bodied people. His record regarding female birth control access is a hot mess.

 

Never would you ever try and stop people from accessing birth control? Huh. And wouldn't you know, that is a real thing with the "death to gays" guy Kevin Swanson, with whom Ted Cruz recently shared a stage. His main man in Virginia is Rep. Dick Black, who despises contraception of any kind.  ( I talked about that weirdo right here, myself.)

 

Ted Cruz thinks a lot of people have a mote in their eye, but he is totally beamed. Seriously, does Ted Cruz think we are that much not paying attention? Well, no. I am. And you can't actually Jedi-mind-trick the culture war battles away. 

Domestic Terrorist Kills Three at Planned Parenthood

Here's the deal--I still don't know all the backstory about Robert Lewis Dear, but when someone enters a Planned Parenthood clinic shooting, and barricades himself in, engaging in a gunfight that wounds four law enforcement officials, killing one, and also killing two other civilians, and wounding several others besides, it's kind of hard not to consider this to be an act of domestic terror. The FBI has had warnings that Planned Parenthood clinics might be facing violence. There have been actual recent episodes of vandalism and arson at PP clinics.

It's sickening that a health care provider servicing largely poorer individuals is being singled out for attacks based on a stupid hoax. It's downright appalling that the hoaxers encouraged terror against Planned Parenthood and their clientele, with an able assist from many high profile politicians, including GOP presidential candidates. I know Ted Cruz is proud of his endorsement from Operation Rescue's Troy Newman, who no doubt thinks this is a great thing. (Let's see if this link endures, shall we? Otherwise, the Troy Newman endorsement is right here.)

So basically, enough of the GOP "family values" stalwarts pitched in to demonize the lawful surgical practice of abortion engaged in by some Planned Parenthood locations, which also participated in a program where fetal tissue donation occurred, which is not terribly different from organ donation (Do you have a donor card? Thank you. I appreciate your willingness to be harvested for your body parts.) to make some people boiling mad about the itty bitty baby body parts and whether someone was profiting from them.

Gosh. It might be true that we all benefit from vaccines and other technologies that have been developed by these means. But then again, that's just the heathen "science" talk. But there's a serious flaw in the antichoice argument--that the pregnant person's life and choices matter regardless of their opinion that the existence of a fetus overrides them. And this has been legally upheld just recently. And what we should also learn from recent history is that laws against abortion don't stop abortion. They just make them illegal and less safe.

Basically, I don't know all the details, and maybe this was a random lone nutter who didn't know where he was--but I think the odds of that are vanishingly small. I think this was a deliberate act.

As for me, my thoughts are with the victims of this terror attack and their families, and regardless, I stand with Planned Parenthood.