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? 

Reality is What Red State Governors Can Get Away With

 

NEW AUDIO: Brian Kemp says he is open to banning contraceptionhttps://t.co/8SVPoL2uT0

— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) September 15, 2022

I noted in my comments regarding Sen. Graham's 15 week abortion ban proposal that it is always reasonable to define Republicans as being just as extremist as they tell us they are--and here is another proof.

Gov. Kemp., who isn't the biggest fan of democracy, doesn't care that a lot of women do use birth control or at least feel like this is a good option for women to have.  If the Dobbs decision means he can ban birth control, despite the needs or desires of the women of his state, he feels like this is okay--because once you start culling the voter rolls of voters you don't think are with you, you stop giving a fuck about whether you are aligned with the voters' needs or concerns. You just side with the right-wing ideologues who brought you. 

Georgians, check your voter registration. If you are not on the rolls, you have until October 11.  Your governor does not care about your choices and wants to take them away. 

I hate governors who want to take rights away. This is why I am dead-set against Doug Mastriano in my neck of the woods, who is the same or worse. He scoffs at "my body, my choice", too. And I will live with my body my whole life, but I won't live comfortably if I didn't fight against someone who wanted to make choices for everyone else without considering their whole life experience and reality. Or rather, just keep government out of it. 

It's not their right. And they should not be in a position to pretend it is. 

UPDATE: Because we are not ever finished with radical Republican, woman-hating ideas, I have two related stories to add. First, there's a Michigan candidate for Attorney General who thinks Plan B should be treated like fentanyl. Yes, Plan B, the "morning after pill"--which is an emergency contraceptive. If life starts at conception, preventing conception would be, um, not taking a life. Don't worry, though, because the gentleman would do this having no idea how any of that works. He is just really certain that if you were the recipient of unexpected penis, you need to deal with unexpected fetus. And carry it all the way through. Why yes! He is a Republican. (My beloved friends and acquaintances let's don't ever have GOP AG's. They really are the worst.)

The other vicious nightmare of a potential Republican future is criminal penalties for abortion patients. They want to imprison people who terminate pregnancies, or worse.  Probably the death penalty. After all, if you want to say abortion is murder, what better way to signify that you are "pro-life" than to put someone to death for ending a pregnancy? And I can easily imagine people on death row for miscarriages, because why wouldn't someone with their head up their ass about the "miracle of life" add miscarriage of justice to the tragedy of potential life lost? 

The SCOTUS Dobbs decision has legitimized the logic of the clinic-bombers into law. To my mind, the vagaries of human sexual intercourse and development of human embryos are such that the law should back the whole hell off of trying to codify what is collectively right and leave a space for pregnant individuals to be respectfully treated as unique private persons with their own moral, physical, mental, economic realities. There was a lot of wisdom in the Roe decision, and today's partisan court totally lost the plot. 

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. 

The Techno-Witch-Finders' Guide to Hunting Recalcitrant Femmes

 

Police have new tricks to land convictions for miscarriages.

People waiting at a clinic, scrolling their phones, get served ads from “crisis pregnancy centers."

When it comes to repro rights, your digital trail matters more than you know. https://t.co/9axoi4WDUb

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) May 7, 2022

We are supposed to pretend that laws against abortion are not supposed to affect people who aren't seeking abortion care for their pregnancies, but anti-abortion laws are increasingly about outlawing being female-bodied or childbearing. Take the laws discussed regarding banning IUDs or Plan B. You aren't supposed to try and fool Mother Nature, you are supposed to eventually get caught with child and deliver unto Ceasar his civilians. Don't you even like people? Why aren't you making them? 

Lest I Be Considered A Bigot

Sen. Rick Scott: "The left discredits those who believe in a supreme being or the commitment of marriage, and doesn't place value in family." pic.twitter.com/TVTDm9CRCC

— The Hill (@thehill) September 24, 2020

Watch this entire video. I'm a leftist. I don't hate religious people, hard work, Mom or apple pie. I feel like I just got personally reamed out by this elected official, Senator Rick Scott. This man told me I had no values. He told me I don't care about marriage or the deeply-held values of faith communities, that I disrespect the troops and law enforcement, that I am not American in the sense that he understands America from the Pledge of Allegiance and so on.

The pledge of allegiance was written by a socialist minister (because socialists can also be believers--not that there's anything wrong with not being one) and did not include the words "under God" originally. Just as we have civilian leadership over the military--it's the decision of the people through their elected representatives whether a nation should go to war and those elected representatives determine our treaties. Some protestors have a radical view regarding the future of law enforcement, but no one is saying that there will be no laws, nor that no mechanism of enforcement should exist.

And this man needs to back off entirely about the concept of family and the sanctity of marriage. Is he saying couples can not divorce? (Because for what it's worth, I've been divorced and it worked out great for both me and my ex.) (I doubt that's what he's referring to, though.) I think he might be implying that some marriages are not created equal to others because of the genders of the partners involved. But I am a big fan of marriage. I think marriage is a great institution, and I love that LGBT people can enter into marriages and create warm, loving families. If he is against those bonds, maybe the marriage-hater is him, ok? Maybe he's disrespecting those families.

And I don't have a problem with people of faith--I just don't think they need to tell me I have to believe as they do, which is no more than any person of any religion would say to a person of a different religion.

So, let me get stupid and hold up a Senator Marsha Blackburn Tweet:

In Chuck Schumer’s America — only atheists can be Supreme Court Justices.

— Marsha Blackburn (@VoteMarsha) September 25, 2020

A Jewish Senate leader who is, with all of us liberals, mourning a Jewish Justice, only wants atheist Supreme Court Justices, like, maybe, Sonia Sotomayor, a Catholic, who is, according to some protestants, not really a Christian? If what she said seems stupid, it's because it is.

What is all of this religious signifying for? Is it squid-ink to warn liberals off of challenging Trump's preferred SCOTUS choice, Amy Coney Barrett, on religious grounds? I already can't with her on the grounds that Republicans have chosen her, and they clearly believe a atheist woman of childbearing age and alternative sexuality who wants to do her own thing is the entire problem with this country, and nope, I am not the fucking one.

So I am not going to pick a fight over the unfortunate choice of Judge Barrett's religious affinity group's covenant female leader's former titles of "Handmaidens" and wax weirdly on about how this is like a SF novel. That isn't the problem. The problem is Trump got two of his SCOTUS picks by dubious engineering (the Scalia seat held open throughout 2016, and Kennedy's retirement) already, and Trump never was the popular choice, polls badly, and unless I miss my mark, should not get re-elected.

Barrett is the same age as I, and I do not think she represents most women of my generation in terms of reproductive choice and gay rights. I do not want her on a court for the next, possibly 30-40 years. Not because of her beliefs, but because I think she will find a reason to bend the 14th amendment against the way so many have been pulling it, like the arc of history, like the definition of justice, for so long.

The right wing opines that the problem is that people like me are discriminating against her. To do so, they have shown no problem in discriminating against people like me. I worry that this country is reinforcing racist values, but I know in my guts that we are also at risk for theocracy.

Actually, It's About Ethics in Reproductive Health Journalism



 

I feel a little awkward writing about another Planned Parenthood video hoax, because deep down, I think: "Aren't people smarter than this? Like, why would there be a need for investigations into something people familiar with the issue and who watched the whole three hours figured out right away?"

 

The idea that Planned Parenthood would be selling baby body parts is actually embarrassingly stupid. Of course, no one risks fines of up to $50K for a human parts trafficking violation over a "sale" of $30 to $100 for "parts" as if the organs of a later-term fetus could even be used in a grown body. Of course that's reimbursable fees for treatment and storage of tissue donation, and no more objectionable than a person willing their body to science. How in the hell can people demagogue over something this uniquely highly-edited and awkwardly-obtained? But I know why--and it doesn't surprise me at all that the time stamp on the video is a year old or that some legislators knew about the video and kept it under their hats for weeks. They knew it was bullshit, and didn't care. Because they knew very well that their intended audience would eat it up with a spork. What is truth, anyway? And if that question makes you want to wash your hands--it should. The truth ought to matter. But these anti-reproductive autonomy operatives just don't care about the truth. They even lie about the first-hand experience of actual women who have had abortions.

 

I've covered this question about the pious falsehoods before. The religious right doesn't care about walking the dark side where honesty is concerned because they believe they have a bigger truth than mere facts account for--and surprise: That truth doesn't involve your autonomy or will. It involves other people making choices for you--like the idea that employers can use a religious exemption to fire unmarried pregnant ladies. That means employers get to judge whether you should be married, or even be pregnant. And things being what they are, that question isn't simple. And I don't think it out of the question people would throw the religion card because of their group insurance rates. It means Congress feels okay about not funding breast cancer research--that cancer being a major killer of women--because of an association with Planned Parenthood.

 

It's all cynical right-wing pandering bullshit, and it's all based on lies. but Goddamn, it sometimes is effective for these folks. And it shouldn't be. And that bothers me. The religious right has been lying about things for a long time--even trying to cause racial divisions over what really is individual reproductive autonomy. The problem here is, whether someone believes abortion is murder or not--shouldn't anyone care whether the champion video of the moment is even for real, and correctly depicts anything? Anything at all? Because if it was heavily edited and just grants a figleaf to religiously-motivated far-right pols, I think that's dodgy as hell and resent their attempt to poison a debate with sheer lying bullshit.

I Don't Know Where Hobby Lobby Was Baptized

It seems kind of weird to me that I am speculating about the baptismal records of a corporate entity, but I have questions. Such as--would the mere incorporation of a legal entity suffice to grant it the level of personhood to aspire to religious beliefs, and would that bestow the same quality to each location using the same FEIN# for payroll purposes? Would only the corporation itself need to be raised and schooled in the faith and the various sacraments thereof to be considered able to make decisions based in faith, or would each location need to perform its own demonstration of faith? How do Christian corporations take communion? And so on.

Before I get into the rank paternalism and junk science that inform this (of course!) 5-4 SCOTUS decision that tilts at corporate personhood and basically gives a handjob to religious extremists who cast their eyes heavenwards and pretend they don't even know what is in their pants, let me just put it on record--I think this trivializes religion. Me, the militant agnostic. The employers of any persons have no business dictating to them the limits of their free will and relationship to their deity (or deities) of choice. They are not obligated to act in loco parentis regarding their employees moral behavior regarding their health care choices or any activity they engage in outside of the workplace that has no bearing on their work performance. The employees are compensated for their work. They are not compensated for their souls.  It is a Procrustean torment for an employee to match every tenet of their employers' particular doctrinal whims, and insofar as there may be significant doctrinal disagreement even among people sharing a pew, I think introducing an excuse for employers within the mysteries of religion is employing faith as a fig leaf for bigotry, and that is highly questionable.

Enjoying My Hobby in your Lobby

It's some kind of crying shame that I haven't addressed the Hobby Lobby case when I am supposed to be a pro-reproductive rights feminist over here. I don't know where my head is at. But when I was buying yarn to crochet a cozy for a diapraghm case, I had a kind of epiphany that really only comes when you've been sniffing the Modge-Podge for a while--

Look. I think we can agree that an employment contract is not a one-way street. It never was meant to be. So, if Hobby Lobby believes it is totally in the right to make decisions regarding the reproductive health and maintenance of it's employees, in other words, making those employees' private business their store business, then it's only fair that the employees should be able to bring their private business right into the public business.

That's right, Hobby Lobby. If you all think you have a right to dictate the methods your employees use for their bedroom or kitchen floor or whatever activities, those employees should feel comfortable enjoying those activities in your store. I don't mean on the clock. Off-the clock, of course, since your company has decided to also be the boss of all off-the-clock funtimes. But let's get this clear--you wanna make the rules?

You should get to make the rules about stuff happening on the premises of your store. Sexy funtimes don't happen in your store. Until you made it about you. Now I think employees should get to use the break room, or even the return desk, to do what they like--because you guys decided their business was your business. So why shouldn't your business be where they can do their business?

Of course--no one would probably want to actually screw in your store. Not because pony beads and potholder looms aren't fucking erotic as hell, but because that is not what your store is for. Your store is for serving your customers, who for the most part don't give a good goddamn what your employees do so long as they don't screw up an order and give them exact change.  Why don't you try and be at least as tolerant as your customers? And recognize that your employees are human beings with bodies, and that the female bodies deserve to be treated by the people who have to live in them--and that isn't you, Hobby Lobby execs.

A Personhood Amendment for Women

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I couldn't bring myself to write anything for International Women's Day because I was simply too overwhelmed thinking about the numerous ways in numerous states that female bodily autonomy has been attacked. If we are not being treated like children, having information withheld from us to prevent us from making decisions, we are being effectively called livestock; and our privacy and even our bodies are threatened to be invaded by the state. For this reason, I welcome Melissa McEwan's (and Shaker Ma'am's) petition for a Personhood Amendment for Women.  This will be brought to Senators Franken, Murray, and Gillibrand. The proposal reads as follows:

A person identifying as a woman and/or having a uterus shall retain all of the full, basic, and fundamental rights of a US citizen as guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Congress and the States shall make no law that infringes upon a person's life, including but not limited to access to life-saving or life-improving healthcare, and/or medicines and procedures deemed necessary or beneficial by a medical professional and/or by the person having the uterus, procurement of which shall not by denied in and of itself by the presence of a uterus. Congress and the States shall make no law that infringes upon a person's liberty, including but not limited to autonomy over hir own body and the ability to make decisions regarding hir own healthcare. Congress and the States shall make no law that interferes with a person's pursuit of happiness, including but not limited to access to a full spectrum of reproductive options, freedom from forcible reproduction, and the ability to make decisions regarding family planning and family resources.

 I am in total agreement with this amendment, and recommend that anyone who has a moment to spare and cares about the female-bodied sign their name to this petition. We need to let our elected representatives know that a woman's rights are simply human rights. We are people. If it must be spelled out and made law for it to be understood--then so be it.I am perpetually astonished and outraged that it isn't understood already.

The Testimony that was Rejected by the House GOP

(Via ThinkProgress.)


This was what was missing from the "show-hearing" Rep. Issa ran today. This argument concerning contraception should be centered on women's health, not the the self-regarding prigs whose conscience would keep them up nights if a woman dared to have sex without the risk of child-bearing--but feel no qualms at all about the possibility of young women having their health and fertility impaired by lack of affordable access to necessary health care.

"A person with a uterus has no opinions that a man need respect."--The US House GOP

Or at least, that's the initial impression I got from this:



This country is certainly not about the right of some people to dictate their religion to others, of that I'm fairly certain.  But leaving aside the assinine frame that that the contraception issue is solely about religious liberty, to the exclusion of any concerns about women's health, it is astounding that they could not have made room in that panel for one single female-bodied person. What was the harm? Were they afraid that the mere sight of a woman having opinions just like men do might somehow convince people that, I don't know, women were people and they have a right to make choices for their own bodies?

This display was a chilling reminder that the GOP does not respect women--not their opinions, not even the facts regarding their health and their lives.

Glenn Beck--a stupendously ignorant, misogynistic little man who just called a whole lot of women "prostitutes".

Listening to Glenn Beck is difficult for me, because I have this tendency to think about things that I hear. Also, I don't regularly watch Beck's tv show or listen to his radio show because, for the most part, why do something I find really unpleasant? So I usually only catch snippets of him at his act, and the head-spinning changes in tone that make me just look at him as a basically crapulent fake probably stand out more for me because I don't see any "in-between". You know, the way stop-motion footage speeds up action, the gaps between Beck's tragedy and comedy masks makes it seem like he's just not for real.  There's his teary-eyed, faux-noble, swellingly patriotic and religious routine--and then there's his total chuckle-headed Morning Zoo crass offensiveness.

I found this clip of Glenn Beck at his crassest regarding Planned Parenthood pretty interesting, though: