“Small Government” Conservatives and Women’s Bodies

I heard it said long ago that the difference between Liberals and Conservatives is that Liberals want to liberate people and control corporations while Conservatives want to liberate corporations and control people.

Like any broad statement, there are lots of exceptions on both sides.

But it does largely describe today’s Conservatives.

While insisting that (millionaires, billionaires, the top 1%, the Rich, those making over $250,000/year – pick your term) should not see their taxes go up in these economic times, while insisting that Corporate Tax rates are too high in a period of record corporate profits and a surging stock market while many very profitable Fortune 500 companies pay little or even no Corporate Income tax, these same Conservatives have decided that what they really need to be focused on is Women’s Reproductive Health.

While unemployment and budget deficits remaining frustratingly high, Conservatives across the nation, at both the Federal and State level have decided that what they really need to address is Contraception and Abortion and other issues of Women’s Reproductive health.

I have lost count of how many states have passed laws deliberately designed to make abortion, a procedure that is both safe and legal, as hard to get as possible.  You almost have to give them credit for a high degree of inventiveness in their cruelty.  They act like women do not already face an incredibly difficult choice of whether or not to terminate a pregnancy.  They act like women are just getting all these abortions on a whim without much thought or personal torment or regrets.  It’s like Conservatives think that women facing this choice do so happily and glibly.

I want people to read my blog so I won’t include my uncensored opinion of these Conservatives and their insistence on their right to force the government into the middle of this incredibly difficult choice.  Suffice it to say, I hold these Conservatives in the highest disdain.

So women who are already facing a choice that most of the realize will be life changing, that most of them realize will come with regrets either way, now have to run a gauntlet of new laws in order to be allowed control over their own bodies.

It started with waiting periods.  Some states passed laws that required women wait an arbitrary number of days between before they could get an appointment for the procedure.

Some states now require that a woman get counseling from a state approved (and anti-abortion) counseling organization.  In one state, that provision went into effect yet there were none of these counseling organizations licensed to do this counseling.

Many states have changed the laws regulating clinics that perform abortions to make their operations much more expensive.  There is no medical reason for the new laws, they just want to make it harder and harder for these clinics to operate.

Then some states started requiring the women get ultrasounds before being allowed control over their own bodies.  They had to look at the developing fetus or listen to its heart beat.  All designed to make an incredibly difficult decision even harder and more painful.  There is no medical reason for these test, and the women are required to pay for these tests themselves, raising another barrier to women controlling their bodies.

And now the latest outrage is laws in a number of states requiring that women have physically invasive procedures.  They are required to pay a doctor to stick a trans-vaginal ultrasound probe into their vagina though they are not actually required to look at the screen.

Really??

And it’s just one or two states, there are literally hundreds of these offensive laws being proposed in legislatures across the country and dozens of them are going into effect, all designed to make what is already a hard decision harder and more expensive and make it last longer.

And their next target is Contraception.  Senator Santorum, while running for President stated his personal opposition to Contraception.  Several states have proposed what are called Personhood Amendments that would attach the rights of personhood to the human embryo at the moment of conception.  This law would, among other things, have the effect of banning all hormonal contraception, the most widely used and most reliable form of contraception.

It will get worse unless we can throw these people out.

This is their idea of Small Government?

In these hard economic times, this is what Conservatives are focused on.  It’s as amazing as it is infuriating.

And it gets better.

Conservatives have now decided that Planned Parenthood is evil.

It started with a lie.

A lie told on the Floor of the United States Senate.

A Conservative Senator went on the Floor of the United States Senate and stated as if it was a fact, that abortions were 97% of what planned Parenthood does.  The real number is like 3%.  When confronted with this gross discrepancy, this Senator’s office issued a statement that what he said on the Floor of the United States Senate was, and I quote, “not intended to be a factual statement”.  Nice use of a thesaurus.  His office released a statement admitting that he LIED.

But now all of a sudden, Planned Parenthood was a target of these demented people.

90% of American women will make use of one Planned Parenthood service or another in their life time.  From Mammograms and other cancer screening, to contraceptive services to counseling, Planned Parenthood has been serving women in America but now these small government conservatives have decided that it’s evil and needs to be stopped.  Several states have stopped funding Planned Parenthood clinics.  They tried to get a federal funding ban and failed.  One conservative woman led the Susan Komen Foundation down this path and the foundation stopped its funding for Planned Parenthood.  I am happy to say that particular attack on Planned Parenthood failed.  In response to that move, many people made increased donations to Planned Parenthood, far more than the funding the Susan Koman Foundation was taking away, and money stopped flowing into the Susan Komen foundation and donors took their money elsewhere.

Some other these (unprintable) people have even decided that the Girl Scouts are evil because of their supposed link to Planned Parenthood and Girl Scout organizations around the world.

And this is their idea of small government.

Welcome to the Party

Just a note to the President.

I celebrate your decision to announce that you are now openly supportive of the Rights of Homosexuals to MARRY.

I suspect that you have felt this way for a while and just couldn't say so politically.  I understand that.  Politics is the art of the possible after all.  And despite your position 4 years ago, you have done more to advance the rights of Homosexuals than any previous President.

I just wanted to say.

Welcome to the Party.

Stand up for Being Liberal

It’s time to take back “Liberal”

It’s time to stand up and declare the Liberal is a Badge of Honor.  I badge I wear proudly.

What do Liberals have to be proud of?

The Voting Rights Act
The Civil Rights Act
The Affordable Care Act
The Environmental Protection Act
The Clean Air Act
The Clean Water Act
The GI Bill
Pell Grants
Guaranteed Student Loans

Shall I go on?

We can and should be proud of what we are struggling for even now

Equality for Homosexuals
Equal Pay for Equal Work
The Buffett Rule
Extended Unemployment Insurance

We have let the Republican Lie Machine take away a proud label and turn it into a curse and that had to end.

Any time you hear a Conservative/Republican tell you how proud they are to be Conservative, ask them what great things, positive things, Conservatives have done for this country.  The silence will be deafening.  They might try to tell you about all the things they are against.  They might try to tell you all the things they have stopped.  But I have yet to find a Conservative who could tell me the great things that Conservatives have DONE.  Actual Positive Accomplishments.

Ask them.

And remember why Liberals are and should be Proud of being Liberal.  We have done great things, things that have made this country greater, healthier, more equitable, and more prosperous.

And there is more to do.

Take back the proud label of Liberal.

Joe Paterno – Legal vs. Moral Responsibility

They fired Joe Paterno last night. Not just him but the President of Penn State University as well but the firing of Joe Pa, the winningest coach in College Football history, is the one that is enerating all the controversy.

Joe’s defenders, and there are many, argue that he satisfied his legal responsibility by reporting the abuse committed by a former assistant as soon as he learned of it.

And they are probably right. He did what was required by law and then moved on.

But still he got fired.

You can argue, and I won’t disagree, that the trustees were operating from a need to protect the reputation of the University from bad publicity. You can hear that in their statement. Firing Joe Pa was good for the University because keeping him on would have let to lots of bad publicity.

What I didn’t hear from the Trustees or from Joe Pa or from anyone else I have seen quoted is a sense of shame on their part that they didn’t do more sooner. They might have expressed some remorse in hindsight that they didn’t do more but even the apology doesn’t seem to reflect any sense of shame at letting this occur and not reacting strongly.

The young man who saw a former coach abusing a boy in the shower did what he was required to do. He reported it to his superior, Joe Paterno. He didn’t walk into the shower and stop the
abuse. He didn’t call the cops. He didn’t try to protect the boy who was, at that moment, being abused right in front of him.

Did he fulfill his legal responsibility? Probably.

Did he in any way meet what has to be thought of as a moral responsibility? Not even close.

Did Joe Paterno, when he was told of the abuse that was at that moment happening in a facility under his control, do what he was legally required to do. Probably.

But what about his moral responsibility? There he failed completely.

And that same failure occurred time and again with everyone in the University who knew of the event.

Some of them didn’t even meet their legal responsibility. As some point somebody at the top, maybe Joe Pa, maybe his boss, but somebody, was required by law to call the police and report the crime. And they didn’t even do that.

But I think their moral failure is far greater than their legal one. These men knew that someone
with a long association with the University was abusing boys and they did nothing to stop it.

I wish I could say that I would reacted morally, and stopped the abuse if I saw it occurring. I hope I would. I think I would. But until I am actually standing somewhere seeing a some else committing an unspeakable act, until then I won’t know for sure how I will react. I know this
though. Should I fail to act, I know I will regret my moral failure.

So far I haven’t seen any hint that any of the people involved in this sordid mess feel that sense of same.

I think they should have fired the winningest coach in college football history. I just think they gave the wrong reason. And I don’t think they are learning the right lesson.

Who are the Republilcans - Part Duhh

The devolution of the modern Republican party continues to amaze me.

There have been literally years of stupidity where the Birther fringe of the Republican party sacrificed all seriousness, where DONALD TRUMP rode the birther idiocy to a lead in the Republican polls before flaming out when the President released yet another document proving where he was born. After all that 23% of Republican voters still believe that President Obama is an undocumented alien.

23% of Republicans

That's not a fringe, that not out on the edge, that's a serious chunk of the Republican Party.

Is it any surprise that Herman Cain is the Republicans leading candidate for President of the United States?

Voter Fraud Alert!!!!!

I missed this somehow, and I pay pretty close attention to what is going on. But apparently there has been massive and pervasive voter fraud happening in almost every state that has a Republican Majority in their Legislature. That must be it. Huge Voter Fraud scandal and I just missed it. I clearly need to pay better attention.

So now Republican legislatures across the nation are enacting laws designed to prevent this massive voter fraud by requiring that everyone who votes have a government issued ID card.

As with any attempt to prevent fraud, some amount of legitimate voting will have to be sacrificed. Young people, poor people, minorities, the elderly, people who live in cities, all these people who don't have cars and so don't have the most common form of government issued ID, Drivers Licenses, all those people can't vote unless they find their birth certificate and then go to some state office somewhere, often the DMV (and we all know how much fun a visit to the DMV is) to apply for a state issued ID card for which they have to pay around $20 depending on the state.

Now these good Republican legislators who clearly have the people's best interest at heart understand that some among us can't afford the cost of this new ID card so these benevolent legislators will allow you to have this new ID for free if you can prove to some other bureaucrats that you can't afford it. Of course if you minimum wage job doesn't allow you the time off to traipse from one government office to the next to prove that you are poor but still really you, then I guess you are just tooo much of a loser to be allowed to vote.

I would like someone to point me to the stories of voter fraud that I must have missed. I looked on The Google and couldn't find them, but I know they must be out there. Why else would so many Republicans want to make it so much harder for the poor and the young and minorities, and the elderly to vote. Surely these laws which have already prevented 10's or even hundreds of thousands of people from voting were made necessary by some massive voting fraud scandal. And that is something I would be interested in reading about!!

But then we all know that is not true.

There hasn't been any massive voter fraud.

And those incidences of fraud that did occur in our past wouldn't have been prevented by this law.

The problems is that the young and the poor and the elderly and minorities (who are often among the poor) have historically tended to vote Democratic. So if you want to reduce Democratic voter turnout then its easy to claim to be trying to prevent voter fraud and make it difficult or impossible for all these people who generally vote Democratic to vote. Republicans don't have to get as many of their voters out to the polls because they have used the law to prevent so many Democratic voters from being allowed to vote.

This is the modern Republican party. They make up this story that they are trying to prevent voter fraud as a cover for their real intent to suppress turnout by traditionally Democratic voting groups. They don't even really have to try to convince anyone since the seem to do this in states that have Republican majorities in the legislature and Republicans as Governors.

Talk about massive Voter Fraud!

Who are the Republicans?

I must admit to not really understanding in many ways the Republican Party.

This is, after all, the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.

It used to be that there were adults in the Republican party, people who understood that working together for the betterment of this country was more important than ideological purity or craven political gain.

I disagreed with Ronald Reagan on almost every issue. His policies of tax cuts and deregulation and spending more and more borrowed money on defense spending that dwarfs what is spend by our prospective adversaries exploded the deficit and gave us the Savings and Loan collapse that cost $500Billion to fix. And the legacy of his insane policies haunts us to this day with every Republican worshipping at the Altar of Reagan in California.

Ronald Reagan could not get nominated for County Commissioner by today's Republican party. He was too liberal, to willing to cooperate with Democrats to actually get things done. He recognized that he had to raise taxes to reign in the explosion in the deficit that his own policies had created.

As a Republican candidate in today's America, he would be less likely to get nominated than Buddy Roemer.

Today's Republican Party has abandoned everything that Reagan stood for. Reagan compromised about taxes and actually raised taxes 6 times. He supported immigration reform granting amnesty to millions of undocumented aliens. As governor he signed the most liberal abortion in the land years before Roe vs. Wade. He would actually cooperate with Tip O'Neil, the Democratic Speaker of the House. Today's Republicans insist that the only way to reduce the deficit is by cutting everything except defense spending. They insist that those they disagree with must be Communists or Socialists or Hate America.

They think that attacking President Obama for anything and everything that he does somehow constitutes a policy. Even when he does the things they earlier encouraged him to do. In one of the first Republican Presidential Debates EVERY one of the candidates agreed that they would reject a deal to reduce the deficit that was 90% spending cuts and only 10% tax increases. Their rigidity is their hallmark. They were willing to literally let the country default on its obligations in their monomaniacal insistence on reducing the deficit exclusively through spending cuts. They talk allot about how bad the economy is yet block every attempt by this President to actually spur the economy. Republicans originally proposed a deficit commission and then turned against it when President Obama embraced it. Obamacare, with it's individual mandate, strongly resembles the mandatory health insurance program passed in Massachusetts by then Governor Romney. Now that same Romney promises to repeal Obamacare as one of his first acts in office if elected President.

Look at the current leading candidates for the Republican nomination.

Mitt Romney is widely thought of in the media as the adult in the room. This is the same man who has changed every major position in his political life since his time as governor. This same man who claimed that his actually residence for voting purposes was in the basement of his son's house. And this is the adult in this group of dwarfs.

And next we have Herman Cain. This mental giant has actually proposed doing something instead of just promising to repeal everything that President Obama has done. But his 999 proposal for tax reform would increase taxes on the poor and cut taxed on the wealthy and would increase the deficit since it wouldn't bring in as much money as the current system does. And we asked how is program would actually work in detail, he literally said he had no idea. IT'S HIS IDEA. You would think that he might want to have an idea bout how his idea would work.

Next we have Mr Texas Economic Miracle himself, the Governor of the big state of Texas, Rick Perry. This mangles the language more then even his predecessor in Austin, George Bush, did. It doesn't appear that he is that much brighter than Shrub either. But he does like executing people. And his record for executions is apparently a great applause line in Republican Debates. He wants us all to follow Texas's example by failing our schools, creating more minimum wage jobs than anyone else, and Praying for rain while denying the realities of Global Warming. To his credit he actually seems to have a heart sometimes. He supports for Texas' version of the Dream Act and the HPV vaccination program which will literally save thousands or even millions of lives. Of course those policies are the least popular parts of his platform among the Republican faithful.

Michelle Bachman had her brief moment in the sun, but quickly showed that she was even too nucking futs for even the Baggers she tried to appeal to. The threw here aside for Perry before trying to throw him aside for Christie and now threw them all aside for Cain.

And the rest aren't even a good side show.

Who are these people

Is this really the cream of the Republican Party?

Unfortunately I think it is. This really is the best of what is left in that once great and proud party.

And that's kind of a shame.