The Hostess With the Mostess?

 

Of the gross and galling things I've read this week, I guess the one that gives me the most amusement (FWIW) is this pretty accurate description of how men sometimes talk about female bodies, with this clip where a Republican politician refers to pregnant people as "host bodies" several times. See? The body is a host to the growing thing. An embryo or fetus. Which would make it a....parasite? 

I can't even joke about antiparasitic drugs like Ivermectin because pregnant humans and other mammals have been dosed with antiparasitics, and the results about harmful effects to pregnancies are kind of inconclusive. But pregnant people seeking abortions deliberately have dosed with any number of things deliberately, such as pennyroyal oil, with grave physical consequences. Because of the amounts used to make sure the job was done, because of the grave contraindications pregnancy and childbirth have had for living one's life in so many circumstances. The social and financial repercussions. The physical complications. 

Describing a pregnancy in the stark terms of "host bodies" neatly erases the whole woman-body/mind that experiences the pregnancy, while also inadvertently labelling the pregnancy as a "parasite"--a burden meant to be gotten rid of.  Like a pox, or a burden. Or a punishment for having sex that isn't "consequence-free". (Because the birth control failed--but that's next, I think.) 

I don't doubt though, that the people who passed this law and the people who support it are ignorant as hell about how it will affect women. I mean, look at this beardo:

M'kay--this guy does not seem to know how menstrual cycles work, which is not actually shocking even here in the 21st century, somehow.  But like, does he think a "Check Uterus" light comes on when a woman catches pregnant and they're just ignoring it for the next 6,000 miles or what? 

The Curb Problem

I've seen the video of PA State Rep. Brian Sims confronting anti-abortion protesters outside of a Philadelphia Planned Parenthood, and I am honestly a little conflicted. I'm extremely on his side regarding the good work that PP does for community health, especially for reproductive health, that sometimes social shibboleth. I also view anti-abortion protesters as basically busybodies who want to tell other people what they can do with themselves, without ever having to weigh and consider the life stories of the people who have bodies with histories, with health issues, with any human, entirely personal matter that is not up for some curbside "counseling". 

I get it. What they do is intrusive and constitutes personal harassment of people living their own lives according to their constitutional rights.  If they gave such a shit, camp out at a legislative office or work harder on educating people about not getting pregnant in the first place if you want to stop abortion, but getting in the face of regular folks with their own problems has always been bullying (and sometimes the harassment of clinic personnel goes even further--so there's definitely that). Sims, a lawyer and LGBT rights activist who has also worked as a PP escort, has all the experience he needs of these judgmental, "doing more harm than good" people, praying at (not for, oh, make no mistake) patients as if to try to shame them out of claiming their bodies' needs.

I think of this really excellent video of a man who was being curb-shamed by these so-called "counselor" activists, when it was not at all the right time for them to insert themselves (and yes, I know it never really is).  They didn't understand the trauma a young family that wanted children could be going through, and were callous and defensive. These protestors are full of self-importance and relative ignorance about why people are even visiting a clinic, and I don't disagree with the idea that they are the ones who should find something better to do. Adopt a kid, if you think unwanted babies need love. Fund people with at-risk pregnancies and support universal health care. Support well-family programs for nutrition and day-care. But just don't holler in people's faces. 

But I also feel like there's a rule about what public servants should be doing vs civilians. Is a persona with a public platform as an elected official in the right place using his social media to shame a protester? Or to use that platform to crowd source doxing? I'm not as cool with that, and not just because it gives license to right-wing pols to dox leftist protesters. It's just, you have access to better tools--use those! Bring that energy--without personally getting up in the activists' spaces because that deal is unequal. 

I also think he got unnecessarily personal in addressing the old white lady as an old white lady. I know, I'm starting to radiate some serious "Talk to your manager" energy myself, but while I don't see "white" as a slur, please don't get all up in someone's case about whether they are old. Yes, some of the protesters are post-menopausal and don't need to consider their own likelihood of coming down with a case of baby on board. But also, some people just have old faces and can get caught out in their fifties. 

Taking it to the Streets and the Town Halls

The 2016 elections certainly seem to have had an effect on the populace at large--they have gone activist. The above video of UT Rep. Jason Chaffetz in all its length and glory shows people who have real concerns about what their US Representative is really representing, and who are demanding he hear them out. Chaffetz is a unique feature of the current House of Representatives. I don't much care for him, myself. And the US Representative's ever-so-very considered response to the hour plus of raucous exchange?

It was totally a Land of Thousand Fakes. He thinks the people who gave him a hard time were paid protesters instead of his actual constituents. I wonder what he'll think next time--there will be a next time.

(This is basically what some people have been trying on about the Women's March a couple weeks back. And nope--real women, real signs, real knitted hats, and really, really pissed off folks. Just try to imagine how much one would even have to pay to significantly fill out even a thousand-seat venue for a couple hours. Then imagine what it would be like to try and mobilize a protest for several hours in every state and every continent, basically. Not even doable.)

But to understand why people are getting the activist spirit, take a look at this Florida town hall:



The "death panels" lie was so widely reported that this crowd is completely wise to it. The phrase "OK children" is an appallingly insulting thing to say to people who actually do know what they are talking about. And no, I don't think these are fake protesters either. They know what the ACA is--and they know there has to be a replacement before any talk of repeal should happen--now that talk of repeal is more than just talk, but a real thing the GOP can do.

There have been marches and protests, some with a solid pedigree--like the Moral March in North Carolina, and the ever-present counter-protest to the anti-abortion "Defund Planned Parenthood" contingent.

The protest movements aren't new, but have renewed purpose.

Protest is the new normal--and it will happen way too often for anyone to believe it to be fake:

Expect it. Because  in a democracy, people feel it is right to petition their representatives for redress of grievances, and man, we are griefing.

A "Billionaire" Settles For Pence

So, when the world is on the brink and evil is on the loose, and it looks like some commonsense leadership is hard to find, would anyone doubt the goodwill of "Never Trump" evangelical Mike Pence and funky as he wants to be Donald Trump being on the same ticket? Especially when Trump fucked off like a mad cow over Pence when the whole Nice thing went live because the pick wasn't assertive enough for him? When he decided let's not even do Pence, and tried to back out, even though the Governor of Indiana was in a bind over whether to run for his second term?  When NJ Governor Chris Christie tried to take a stab at currying favor and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was at his "She Turned Me Into A Newt" Gingrinchiest.

Sure. This is how a candidate for president could behave--if that person was completely incompetent and not remotely fit for office and also sort of wanted to fuck over pretended allies because of obscure grudges.

So, that's where I think Trump is.

But let's get real about what a Pence pick says about Trump--remember when he was asking us to believe that he was a great friend of queer folks? Well no! The Pence pick basically implies he is anything but, and Pence also highlights the way a government can punish women for even thinking about abortion.

They are basically a match made in GOP hell. I think they represent an inconvenient marriage of convenience and are both too stupid to be politically useful. I also love the nonsense penetration that is their "ThinkProgress" evocative logo and the vision of Loud Trump hollering into Mike Pence's stupid stiff face at any event at which they deign to mutually appear.

Like in Bedminster NJ, making sweet ticket love in Gov. Christies' backyard. Because Trump is never not humiliating potential allies. He's kind of a monster that way. Don't be played.

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.

That Didn't Go as Planned, Did it?

So, imagine you'd been working for eight years of your young life on a project to bring down a major reproductive health care nonprofit on the basis of some highly-edited, surreptitiously-filmed videos that purport to show some illegal activity, and then when you finally deploy that hard work--gosh darn it all, it's like you're the bad guy?

Well, I guess that must be where David Daleiden is sitting with his bad self, because a grand jury investigating Planned Parenthood decided to indict the Center for Medical Progress activist and his associate, Sandra Merritt, for tampering with government evidence, and, ironically, attempting to purchase human organs. (Purchasing human organs is not legal. Donating fetal tissue is. After eight years working on this thing, the legal distinction should not have escaped the anti-choice activists' attention--but of course, their purpose was always to blur that line.) Daleiden could quite possibly see prison time.

Numerous states have now investigated Planned Parenthood and cleared them of any wrongdoing. These false videos have basically revealed, not that Planned Parenthood is a bad organization, but that there is something deceitful and low about the anti-choice movement. They could not limit the rights of people to exercise their own reproductive health choices with the truth, so they resorted to falsehoods.

That certainly did not go as planned for them.

2015-Year in Review

In years past, I managed to complete my "year in review" or "blog round-up" post before the year was out, but for 2015, I wanted to experiment with something a little more elaborate. In looking back at the prior year's blog posts, it seemed to me that each month suggested an ongoing theme playing out at that given time, so I wanted to recap each month by tying the theme for the month in with posts that evoke that theme--it's a little ambitious, I know.

January: The violent attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine started the year off with what became a recurring theme: freedom of speech versus criticism, state penalties, and terror. I also addressed "political correctness" as a critique of speech that could be useful in some ways, censorious in others.

February: The theme for February was misinformation. The month kicked off with some irritation with anti-vaxxers, whose poor understanding of how vaccines work is a positive danger. I got irritated with people who don't grasp why "Muslims who do bad things" is only a subset of "all Muslims" in the same way that "Christians who do bad things" is just a subset of "all Christians". And I remain really mad at people who seem to deliberately misunderstand the US fight against Daesh for purely ideological reasons.

March: The theme for March was the "Obama-Haters For War to Keep us Safe". Franklin Graham seems to like saying Obama is influenced by Muslims, and I like saying Franklin Graham is a bigoted shitlord. Forty-seven Dumbass Ronin showed their asses, and Sen. Cotton was their king. Also, a couple people just frankly said "Bomb Iran and it will rain Viagra for 40 days and nights".

April: I think the theme was "Separation of Church and State". My former senator and 2016 GOP presidential candidate (for now) Rick Santorum was ready to stand with IN Gov. Mike Pence in his support for a bill that would protect the "right" to discriminate against people for religious reasons. (My fear with discriminatory measures is that what starts with sanctioning discrimination, can lead to tolerance of abuse and worse.)  It seemed to me that favoring discrimination, whether on religious grounds or not, was a failure to understand US history, which is something we need to learn from.  But I brought the topic back around to how church and state separation is a social necessity.

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. 

How Ron Fournier Pissed Me Off Today

Correct: Planned Parenthood is legally selling baby parts. https://t.co/MekQbZzoTT

— Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) November 30, 2015

So, as you may know, I take the Planned Parenthood story pretty seriously, because I consider this agency to be on the front lines of reproductive health for a lot of people, so when people get stupid in their reporting about what Planned Parenthood does, I get a wee bit stroppy. So when Ron Fournier decided to make the Twitter assertion that "Planned Parenthood is legally selling baby parts" there really wasn't any sense in Tweeting at him by the time I could have got around to doing that.

Planned Parenthood is a non-profit. They provide services at cost. It isn't the same as for-profit selling. I had a an occasion where I needed three stiches from a kitchen incident and made an emergency room visit, and it cost about $1500 to my insurance provider. Planned Parenthood abortion services are a little more involved, but don't cost as much as a little three stich deal at a for-profit institution.

Now, maybe Fournier thinks he's being cute when he says that they "legally sell body parts". By sale, I guess he was referring to the contract whereby the collection and storage costs were covered by the recipients of the fetal tissue donation, which is still by no means a "sale" because the compensation didn't even necessarily cover the cost of procurement and storage--many media fact-checkers came to this same conclusion.  Saying this was done legally is conditionally true--but he's using that inflammatory configuration of "body parts". This was never a sale, and this was never about "parts" as such, but their value as research tools.

They legally donated tissues. There is no need to "both sides" this cognitive cock-up to legitimize the people who want to see Planned Parenthood as some kind of fetus sausage-factory. Fournier's flippancy here is a disgrace.

Clown Shoes Cruz Has an Opinion About Robert Dear

As you know, I think of Ted Cruz privately (and publically, I guess) as "Clown Shoes" Cruz, because he comes so close to not being a clown, but then, well. Just this morning, I noticed that Gateway Pundit, not exactly a bastion of highbrow observations, had decided that the Planned Parenthood shooter was trans because of some misprint on his voting record, and assumed that because Dear was not a declared Republican, he couldn't be conservative, either.

That's just speculation being posted as fact. Voter registration is not proof of gender preference and not being a Republican isn't proof of being liberal. Neither assumption would cancel out the idea that anti-abortion sentiment could lead to violence, because neither transwomen or non-Republicans are monolithic groups--a person identifying as both or either could still be capable of shooting up a clinic over anti-abortion propaganda.

I thought it was too stupid to be repeated by anyone with an IQ above room temp. So finding that Senator Ted Cruz, Ivy Leaguer, presidential candidate, has repeated it is simply bloody fascinating.

I have nothing to add. Nothing, nope, nothing at all.

"No More Baby Parts."

If the "mainstream media" is to be believed, Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooter, Robert Dear, said "No more baby parts," when he was finally taken into custody after his violent rampage.  But, why, whatever could he have meant by that, do you suppose? Maybe he was just down to the clinic to borrow a cup of baby parts and found they were all out?  Maybe he was building a Frankenstein-esque creature and got peeved at the glut of juvenile bits on the market? Maybe he was misheard and was unhappy with "A. B. parts."

As Sherlock Holmes might have said, if he were prone to using my vernacular, if every other possibility is so fucking stupid and fanciful that you'd have to be a lying bastard to propose them, you should consider the evidence staring you in the face.

And it might just sound a little self-serving if one admits that Dear was a domestic terrorist, as Gov. Mike Huckabee has, but then plays victim by saying it especially harms the pro-life folks. Does this make the anti-abortion people really look bad? Do they need much help, there? And the knee-slapper is, this is the guy who was going to use the US military to forcibly close health clinics. It's "domestic terrorism" if you are a DIY-type. If you're president, you do what you want!

Failed tech-CEO Carly Fiorina takes a slightly different tack--it's just "typical left-wing tactics" to blame anti-abortion rhetoric for violent actions.  How dare we connect those dots in chronological order! This was the candidate, mind you, who imagined a scenario that wasn't even in the highly-edited videos who had to go on to produce one yet more lurid. Which we are not supposed to find incendiary or deceitful in the least, mind you.

Now, a handful of people are just looking at this guy's criminal records and immediately dismissing him as a lunatic. Mental illness is a spectrum, charges against this miscreant were regularly dismissed, and the things he was accused of weren't necessarily out of bounds for people who are considered perfectly sane. Being antisocial or even sociopathic doesn't exclude this person from having political views. People have made note of the fact that Colorado Springs is the headquarters for Focus on the Family. The founding member, Dr. James Dobson, justified both wife-beating and animal abuse.  (Not that I'm saying Dear was influenced by Focus on the Family, at all, at all--after all, he wasn't originally from Colorado Springs. He was from North Carolina. Where Eric Rudolph was found holed up. And there's some folks to this day who consider Rudolph a folk hero. )

The War on Women is Still a Thing--2015

Technically, we knew the House Select Committee on Planned Parenthood was going to happen for a bit, and that it would be headed by a skirt, Rep. Marsha Blackburn,  an anti-choice Republican who is entirely retrograde. (The GOP panel is exactly 8 people, four male, four female. Equalitude!) What could possibly be wrong with siding with the people supporting those videos, eh?  The first grilling of Cecile Richards went so well, that, in conjunction with the obvious ripping success of the Benghazi Select Committee hearing with Hillary Clinton, they absolutely had to try it. Why not make trying to end a low-cost medical care provider funding or status just because of derp?

Really, why not encourage domestic terrorism in the form of arson against medical establishments? Who do these politicians believe that kind of activity even hurts? Because rashes of PP arson is now a thing. And I know the GOP in Congress don't care about anything but the politics--

Also Texas doesn't care. They went from simply defunding Planned Parenthood, to raiding locations to get at confidential medical information. What in the hell are they fixing to do with it? Do they mean to target women who donated their fetal tissue to science for some investigation? How will they use these people's identities? How with they misappropriate their experiences? How will these once-pregnant people be exploited?

Bobby Jindal is a Ridiculous Poser

For some reason, LA Gov. Bobby Jindal thinks everything is better with a helping of maximum Jeeeeeeeesus. Which is why he would go after Planned Parenthood with so many totally political and extra-legal prosecutions of Planned Parenthood it wouldn't even be funny. As in, sending government agencies to strong-arm non-profit organizations isn't funny.

What the hell is wrong with Bobby Jindal? Because in another context, he kind of implied that it would be worthy of prison for any officials to let their agencies be used in a political way,  But apparently, if the IRS was used as Bobby Jindal's shitstirrer, that would be different.

It would not be different. Stop pretending you can use the federal government to be sicced on your pet peeves, Bobby Jindal. We already don't like you. Let's not make it chronic.

I Stand with Planned Parenthood and HRC

On Oct. 16, 1916, Planned Parenthood opened their first health center and changed life for women in America. Here's to the next 99 years. -H

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 16, 2015

.@HillaryClinton They've also ended the lives of millions of unborn babies. Here's to ending #PlannedParenthood's destruction. #ProLife

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) October 16, 2015

One of the real true things about me is my support of the health care access of every person in this country. Respecting all bodies, of whatever walk of life, as equally dignified and deserving of care, seems like a no-brainer to me. Understanding that human beings are sexual beings, and that their reproductive health is not some freakish "extra" thing, but central to their ability to control their economic fate--by making family-planning choices--is essential to understanding how to stem poverty and make healthy families the center of a thriving economy. Hillary Clinton has been a great proponent of women and children's health for as long as I have known of her. She supports the idea that the health of families is crucial to the health of our nation.

Mike Huckabee is a bone-ignorant culture warrior and wouldn't grasp why any woman sees terminating a pregnancy as relative to her own health, even while he easily excuses why a young male sees fit to sexually violate his sisters or their companions.

I know who would dominate in a debate on this subject. But Mike Huckabee will not get the nomination of his party, not least because he is more fit to be a Twitter troll than a president.

Also, I would, grammatically speaking, also like to end the destruction of Planned Parenthood! Yeah! Let's stop trying to end an organization that does a lot for regular people!

Carly Fiorina Could Be the New Mitt Romney

When considering the news that the Koch brothers and other donors were developing an interest in Carly Fiorina, an outsider candidate, I started considering what her appeal was, and then it hit me--she's credibly a little like Mitt Romney, no? He was a businessman with a thin political resume but a remarkable talent for lying, and she's a former business woman with a nearly nonexistent political resume but with a remarkable talent for lying. What the hell? Jeb Bush is like a dead frog with donors trying desperately to run a current though his ass every once in a while to see if he jumps. Fiorina, to give her her due, jumps all by herself. She's not as conspiracy theory-driven as Carson, as clowny as Trump, as nekkidly grifting and holy-rolling as Huckabee and Santorum, and unlike Ted Cruz, people don't want to sock her in the jibs.

She could be going places.

There's the rub--once you start getting taken seriously, why, people might start taking you seriously! I mean, take her business record. Not so great, actually. I think her story goes like this:

Don't cry for me Hewlett Packard,
The truth is I never left you,
although you shoved me
I think you still loved me,
I made increased revenue
if not shareholder value.

And as for my fortune
and as to blame
I never invited them in
even though it might seem
by an objective record of fact
I got paid for crashing
the stock.

But that's illusions,
you should listen to me,
I think I've been more than that,
I'm all I expected I'd be.

There may be reasons why people who worked for her then, or were laid off by her, aren't really in favor of her candidacy.
 

Mike Huckabee is Running for President

Harvesting human organs to be sold like brake pads for a Buick is beyond barbaric, it's immoral, grotesque, & evil. #PlannedParenthood

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) September 29, 2015

I don't know if Mike Huckabee is, in the course of his running for president thing, ever thinking about giving up his social media platforms, like the Facebook page where he supported Josh Duggar, but I am going to suggest that he is definitely not the 2016 winner of how to be a classy person (classy being the new, Trump standard). Indicating his belief that itty bitty baby body parts are being sold like the brake pads of a Buick (a fine, American-made automobile) is a whole dimension of tacky we seldom see in the real world.

He's being special on purpose.

The itty bitty baby body parts of the very small fetuses that are donated by their mamas to be used in research for the eventual cures of things like cancer, Alzheimer's', Parkinson's, and that sort of disease, are a little different from the way auto parts are sold, aren't they? It isn't like anyone ever said, "I done blew out the kidneys on this fetus of mine, so I would like some aftermarket fetus kidneys--and I'll install them myself, nevermind the labor" at some Planned Parenthood counter.

That would be how brake pads are sometimes sold. In state-by-state investigations, Planned Parenthood is being basically absolved of any idea that they are selling itty bitty baby body parts  because they actually can lawfully provide donations of fetal tissue to scientific researchers at the cost of procurement and handling--procurement being reliant upon the clearance of the supplier of the donor tissue--a pregnant person.

Mike Huckabee's lack of presidential timber is being exposed all the time. He regularly grosses me out with his ignorance and sensationalism of same.

About this Planned Parenthood Hearing

I'm going to go ahead and say if someone starts off blaming Planned Parenthood funding for killing their parents, this might not actually be that fair of a hearing, huh? Although if it's any consolation to Rep. Chaffetz, much of the money that was used for the covered services of patients at Planned Parenthood was for cancer screenings, which undoubtedly can help save lives. And if he's still concerned that the US isn't putting enough money towards cancer research, might I suggest diverting some from the Congressional Witch Hunt Fund.

Carly Fiorina and the Very Big Lies

Let's get one thing very straight, here--I don't like Carly Fiorina. I might smile when she takes pot-shots at Donald Trump like a natural-born politician running against him should feel obliged to do, and I might like it that a woman is shaking things up in the GOP primary--but that does not mean I think Carly Fiorina is a great candidate or even an adequate person. Truth is, she bothers the shit out of me, and not just because she trash-talks Hillary Clinton with that "accomplishment" foolishness.

Gurrl, I've followed Hillary Clinton for over twenty years, and you, ma'am, are no Hillary Clinton!

But her recent disgraceful lying about Planned Parenthood takes the cake. She imagined a disgusting scene  that did not occur in the actual CMP videos, and, to cover up her fabrication, produced her own really specious and janky video. Since the images don't have much to do with Planned Parenthood in the real world where people live, I guess her little video stands as a testimony to...her love of fetal snuff porn? Because honestly, her concentration on the mechanics of ending pregnancies while ignoring the reality of women who seek abortions to end their pregnancies basically makes me believe she considers 1 out of 3 women baby killers. And her visit to a pregnancy crisis center should actually remind us that these centers are mostly frauds.

As is Carly Fiorina. After all, her much-vaunted business success is built on self-promotion and a meticulous cover-up of her failures. She 's anything but a job creator.

Basically, she's always lying.  She's a compulsive liar. But when she lies about women's health care in a way that makes it harder for women to obtain care for their bodies or their prospective children's bodies, she goes too damn far for me. I do not like Carly Fiorina, and I do not have room to forgive her very big lies. She has no business chipping away at other women's bodily autonomy and reproductive choice. I stand with Planned Parenthood against her fabricated snuff porn and I support not treating this liar with kid gloves because she's allegedly a lady. She's a politician and not a good one. All systems go.

John Boehner, Don't Look Back in Anger or Tears

There are metaphors that can be used for Speaker of the House John Boehner ("The Only Adult in the House" and the "Designated Driver" come to mind for me) but I think my impression of Boehner's tenure as Speaker of the House is summed up by the three-part series of blog posts I did called "Speaker of Nothing" regarding the summer of 2011 debt ceiling fight. Here he is, Speaker of the House, a powerful position--provided you have a caucus behind you interested in governing. But his Speakership was dependent upon a Tea Party wave in 2010, resulting in many people new to politics who 1) weren't necessarily "House-trained" and 2) were instinctively anti-government.

It's damn hard to come to a consensus with people who actually think "lowering the debt ceiling" is a thing, or who believe that a government shut-down is a perfectly cromulent stunt to put on one's political resume. This is a person who has had to sit across from Michele Bachmann, Steve King, and Louie Gohmert, and accept these were the people on his own team--and no damn help. He's had to deal with occasional votes that weren't against him per se--but are hard not to take a little personally. And sometimes he was put in places he probably had no "win".

I can't blame the man for wanting out, because getting pressure over trying to keep the government running over defunding Planned Parenthood has got to be a vicious kick in the gut for a devout pro-life Catholic. But the problem is, he's standing in the gap between a functional government and the crazies in his own party, for who nothing will ever be enough. He could probably promise them ponies upon ponies--but they would still want flying unicorns, even if those things don't exist. If he came to this decision in the wake of the Pope's visit, with an understanding that he could no longer reconcile his job with his heart--it makes sense.

The problem for the aftermath though is--does this change anything? Will there still be a gap to stand in, or will the Tea Party nihilists just go all smash-happy? Rep. Pete King said, ruefully, this is a "victory for the crazies."  I don't think he's wrong. There are folks who denied Superstorm Sandy emergency funding and don't understand that your national defense and infrastructure are only as good as you actually pay for.

Rep. Boehner might have taken more of an aggressive role in trying to educate and convince his team in how not to be awful, and it does him no credit to have been the Speaker of such dysfunctional Congressional terms. But I think he tried--oh, he tried. And we did survive, after all. We might have busted his balls a  lot. But we could have had worse.