Don't be a Pepper

Remember the good old days, when the adorable David Naughton urged us to join him in being a Pepper?



Times have changed, and with over 14 million Americans out of work, many of them men who now wonder if they will ever work again, and if they don't, just who they are, concern about masculinity is at an all-time high. Enter Dr. Pepper, with a 10-calorie drink that they're marketing specifically to men, because 0-calorie questionable-tasting soft drinks sweetened with poison just aren't macho enough for them. No more wussy-ass song and dance guys who looked like the cast of Glee long before Glee was even a gleam in Fox's eye. No, in the new Land of Pepper, ten calories = one penis:


But this ad isn't the worst of it. The worst is the "10 Man-Ments" that are part of the ad campaign. Apparently you have to "Like" it on Facebook to get to it, so we'll let Chicagoist reveal it for you.

The intrepid Amanda ventured into the fetid swamp of male anxiety so you don't have to:

Obviously, Dr. Pepper rolled out this campaign before there was a mass shooting that left 8 dead, in which the murderer was apparently motivated to get revenge on his ex-wife over not getting his way in a custody battle. But if they'd done a little market research, they would have been able to predict the reaction from the very same misogynists they hope will buy up their soda. David Futrelle gathered some at Man Boobz. The theme of the comments he collected was, "Children are the property of men who create them all by themselves by ejacualating into incubators we call "women", and when you're done with your incubator, she shouldn't be able to get custody over your child-property, no matter what a judge says. And anyone who disagrees only has themselves to blame if they get shot in the face."  A sample:

E]nough of this type of offensive action might just start making women and their supporters* think twice, especially if they also become targets. (* Divorce attorneys, child services workers and counselors, family court judges, and other enabling cogs in the feminist legal system)......

Essentially men need to tell feminism to shut the fuck up, give it a vigorous slap across the face thus reminding it who is the biological superior, then order it back into the kitchen/bedroom.......

What options other than overt acts of physical violence are there for a man to deal with a shrew ex and corrupt family court system?....

Most men will just lay down and be resigned to the state-enforced kidnapping and extortion plot, but some are made of tougher stuff and for you to whine about this dead ex-wife or that is inconsequential and no loss to humanity.

I submit that women … are much more likely to pay attention when they’re being threatened.

In case you were wondering what's going on in the mind of the Tea Party male who's blaming everyone else for his troubles, there you go.

I'm quite sure that when the "creative" and the account guys at Deutsch, Inc. (the ad agency that perpetrated this monstrosity) got together in a room, they imagined themselves to be Don and Pete and Roger and Kenny and Paul in the halcyon days before that kiljoy Peggy got all uppity on them. It would not surprise me if the Mad Men ethos permeates today's ad agencies, as the denizens therein, many of them not around during those days when ad guys, not finance guys, were the masters of the universe, try to capture those long-lost times.

If the name "Deutsch" sounds familiar to you, it's because yes, it's THAT Deutsch -- Donny Deutsch, most familiar to political junkies as the guy on Morning Schmoe who obviously gets up in the morning and thinks that because he looks a little bit like Jon Stewart, if he just combs his hair the same way people will think he IS Jon Stewart. Here's a classic Donny Deutsch moment, which tells you everything you need to know about him:



That's just what Occupy Wall Street needs -- for a bunch of kids to get killed. Yeah, that's the ticket. you can't BUY that kind of publicity. Of course, this shouldn't surprise anyone who in this day and age creates an ad that's nothing more than a retooling of this:

And now we return you to our regularly scheduled programming of Republican misogyny

After two days of listening to Republicans insist that George W. Bush alone deserves the credit for the successful Bin Laden mission and wingnuts everywhere dissing Navy Seals because God forbid Obama should get credit for ANYTHING, it's almost a relief to get back to life in normal America, where the most important priority is not the economy, or even national defense, but rather punishing all those slutty American women.

First, let's go back to redefining rape. Because while the tender feelings of people like me, who have spent 40 years having MY tax dollars pay for wars and tax cuts for the wealthy and other things I don't agree with, don't matter one whit, the tender feelings of those who love the fetus but hate the baby once it's here, are paramount:

In a 251 to 175 vote this evening, 16 anti-choice Democrats joined every House Republican present in passing H.R. 3, the No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act. A chief weapon in the House GOP’s “comprehensive assault” on women this bill proposes some of the most radical and draconian restrictions on women’s rights. They include:

– Redefinition Of Rape: The bill sponsor Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) faced serious backlash after he tried to narrow the definition rape to “forcible rape.” By narrowing the rape and incest exception in the Hyde Amendment, Smith sought to prevent the following situations from consideration: Women who say no but do not physically fight off the perpetrator, women who are drugged or verbally threatened and raped, and minors impregnated by adults.

Smith promised to remove the language and while it is not technically in the bill, Mother Jones reports that House Republicans used “a sly legislative maneuver” to insert a “backdoor reintroduction” of redefinition language. Essentially, if the bill is challenged in court, judges will look at the congressional committee report to determine intent. The committee report for H.R. 3 says the bill will “not allow the Federal Government to subsidize abortions in cases of statutory rape” — thus excluding statutory rape-related abortions from Medicaid coverage.

In America now, it's Republican Congressmen, not your physician, who gets to decide what constitutes health care. And so under this bill, you would no longer be able to deduct the cost of abortion as a medical expense, nor would you be able to use pre-tax dollars to pay for your insurance if that insurance even offers to cover abortions:

The bill would prevent people from deducting the cost of an abortion from their taxable income, except when the procedure is performed in cases of rape, incest or when a physician certifies that a woman's life would be in danger if she continues the pregnancy.

Current law, known as the Hyde Amendment, bars federal money for abortions, with the same exceptions as those in the bill. But the bill would make the Hyde Amendment federal law, rather than a provision added to other bills that must be voted every year.

Abortion opponents have charged that the health care overhaul contains a loophole for insurance policies. Obama's health care overhaul, passed last year, creates state marketplaces for insurance known as "exchanges." It allows participating plans to cover abortions, provided they collect a separate premium from policyholders and that money is kept apart from federal subsidies.

The bill, written by Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., disallows the tax credit for the expenses of a small employer health insurance plan that includes coverage for an abortion. Democrats said that amounts to a tax increase.

"I thought my Republican friends hated taxes, but apparently they hate reproductive freedom and women's rights even more," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif.

Supporters of the bill passed Wednesday say the health overhaul doesn't go far enough to make sure that no tax money is used to subsidize abortions. Congressional estimates say the bill would raise only a negligible amount of tax revenue.

Opponents say the bill would make it difficult if not impossible for many women to obtain medical insurance that covers abortions — even if they pay for it themselves. They say the legislation could put the Internal Revenue Service in the position of determining whether women who get abortions were sexually assaulted, so the agency can decide whether the procedure is tax deductible.

Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., said the bill is really an effort to prevent insurance companies from covering abortions.

Because in these troubled days, the most important thing to Republicans is to codify into law that women who are raped are really just sluts who are asking for it and should be forced to bear the children of their rapists. After all, they'll need cannon fodder for the wars THEIR future leaders are going to start.

Time for the New York Times to dispatch McKinley again

I for one would love to see James C. McKinley spin this rape to "the bitch asked for it":

Two Memphis boys, aged 7 and 9, alleged to have raped a 2-year-old girl last August were placed in protective custody on Monday.

Shelby County Juvenile Court Magistrate Dan Michael turned the boys over to the state's Department of Children's Services after the prosecution asked that they be put in custody for treatment rather than punishment.

The boys' attorneys, James Sanders and Samuel Jones, had both asked that the boys be allowed to receive rehabilitative services from the state while in their own homes.

Sanders, who represents the 9-year-old, said there were "clearly no winners" in the situation.

"You've got a victim who certainly is going to probably bear the scars of this incident for years to come," he said.

"And you've got two young, alleged perpetrators who are going to have to carry the burden of this offense with them for years to come.

Wait. Maybe he wrote this Reuters story too. After all, the REAL victims of rape are the perpetrators, right?

Great minds think alike

Jill Filipovic writers over at RH Reality Check:

Dear Rep. Franklin,

I applaud your efforts to support the rights of zygote citizens of Georgia by criminalizing miscarriages and investigating every instance of fetal death as a potential crime. The bill you are trying to pass is clear that the Georgia State Assembly knows that life begins at the moment of conception, and that any fertilized egg that dies is a human death that we should all grieve. I couldn't agree more, and I would like to help.

As I'm sure you know, more than 50% of fertilized eggs --Georgia citizens! -- naturally don't implant, and are flushed out of the body during menstruation. I am personally concerned that my own murdering woman-body may have flushed out some human beings, and I may have flushed them down the toilet without knowing that I was disposing of Georgia citizens in such an undignified way. This must be remedied. I would like to be sure that I am not killing any more Georgia citizens -- and that if I am, they are able to receive a proper funeral and not a burial at sea, and that our state police can dedicate valuable time and resources to investigating their deaths.

To that end, I attach a picture of my latest used tampon. I am preserving this tampon, as well as all of my other tampons, pads, feminine hygiene products and soiled panties from my current menstrual cycle, so that the Georgia State Police can come collect them as evidence. I would also be happy to drop the specimens off at your office, should you want to examine them yourself.

Please let me know if I can make an appointment to give you these items. Or, since I appreciate that you are a very busy man, please let me know when the police will be by my home to collect them, as my next cycle is rapidly approaching and they are starting to smell. I cannot keep them in my refrigerator for much longer.

Thanks for all the work you do to further the pro-life cause.

Funny....disgusting...and I said it first -- in 2005, 2006, and last Saturday.

I call dibs.

Under proposed legislation in Georgia, if you have a miscarriage, you will be investigated

I've been saying for years that by the time Christofascist Zombie Brigade is done, you'll have to send your used tampons to the government for inspection to make sure there are no fertilized eggs in them.

Proposed legislation by Georgia state representative Bobby Franklin goes far beyond banning abortion:

According to this law, any human intervention other than delivering a living fetus is a crime. Every physician must make an equal effort to save the life of mother and fetus, but if the fetus does die after such an effort, it isn't a crime. It allows an exception for spontaneous abortion AKA miscarriage--but only if there is no human intervention involved.

That banging sound you hear is me beating my head against the stone wall of sheer stupidity.

It goes on to state that any attempt to remove a fetus from the mother except to facilitate a live birth is murder. The doctor MUST do everything to save the life of both fetus and mother, but if the fetus doesn't survive despite this, it's not a crime. Abortion is now a form of murder.

I can see so many issues with this bill.

There are situations where you can't save the life of both fetus and mother.

* What if the woman learns that she has cancer and must terminate the pregnancy in order to get treatment? No exception for that in this bill.

* What about a case where the woman is hemorrhaging, the bleeding can't be stopped and the doctor must save her and abort the fetus? No exception for that.

* What if she has a partial miscarriage, and is bleeding heavily. Must she wait until her body naturally ejects the dead fetus, even though carrying a dead fetus can lead to septic shock? Doesn't sound like there's an exception for that.

* What if it's an ectopic pregnancy? You cannot save the fetus and the mother in such a case.

* What if the woman is told she's carrying an anecephalic fetus with only a brain stem which will be non-viable outside the womb? Must she carry that fetus full-term?

It gets worse. Franklin wants to create a Uterus Police to investigate miscarriages, and requires that any time a miscarriage occurs, whether in a hospital or without medical assistance, it must be reported and a fetal death certificate issued. If the cause of death is unknown, it must be investigated. If the woman can't tell how it happened, than those Uterus Police can ask family members and friends how it happened. Hospitals are required to keep records of anyone who has a spontaneous abortion and report it. Yup, we've been waiting for someone to suggest this--and Franklin has.

Here is the bill, and here is the Uterus Police clause, from section 2.14:

Preparation and filing of reports of spontaneous fetal death shall be as follows:
(1) When a dead fetus is delivered in an institution, the person in charge of the institution or that person's designated representative shall prepare and file the report;
When a dead fetus is delivered outside an institution, the physician in attendance at or immediately after delivery shall prepare and file the report;
When a spontaneous fetal death required to be reported by this Code section occurs
211 without medical attendance at or immediately after the delivery or when inquiry is
212 required by Article 2 of Chapter 16 of Title 45, the 'Georgia Death Investigation Act,' the proper investigating official shall investigate the cause of fetal death and shall prepare and file the report within 30 days; and
(4) When a spontaneous fetal death occurs in a moving conveyance and the fetus is first removed from the conveyance in this state or when a dead fetus is found in this state and the place of fetal death is unknown, the fetal death shall be reported in this state. The place where the fetus was first removed from the conveyance or the dead fetus was found shall be considered the place of fetal death."

Just another dispatch from the Republican war on women.

Real women vs. misogynistic Republican men

California Rep. Jackie Speier vs. the sanctimonious, woman-hating Chris Smith of New Jersey:

Real women who have undergone abortions need to come forward. These men who would take away women's humanity and turn them into breeding machines who can be cast into the garbage, these men whose first priority is not creating jobs, or repairing our infrastructure, or ensuring that future children have some quality of life, but instead punishing people they believe to be nothing but dirty sluts, need to be called out on this.

Bravo, bravo, bravo to Rep. Speier.

More misogyny from Republican males

I'm not sure if I should be glad that I'm still shocked, because it means that I haven't completely sunk into a morass of utter cynicism and hopelessness. But even back before abortion was legal, men who would force women into childbearing weren't so open about their fear and loathing of women -- to the point of articulating that women are simply expendable vessels to be disposed of at will if it means "saving" even an unviable fetus:

The controversy over "forcible rape" may be over, but now there's a new Republican-sponsored abortion bill in the House that pro-choice folks say may be worse: this time around, the new language would allow hospitals to let a pregnant woman die rather than perform the abortion that would save her life.

The bill, known currently as H.R. 358 or the "Protect Life Act," would amend the 2010 health care reform law that would modify the way Obamacare deals with abortion coverage. Much of its language is modeled on the so-called Stupak Amendment, an anti-abortion provision pro-life Democrats attempted to insert into the reform law during the health care debate last year. But critics say a new language inserted into the bill just this week would go far beyond Stupak, allowing hospitals that receive federal funds but are opposed to abortions to turn away women in need of emergency pregnancy termination to save their lives.

The sponsor of H.R. 358, Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA) is a vocal member of the House's anti-abortion wing. A member of the bipartisan Pro-Life Caucus and a co-sponsor of H.R 3 -- the bill that added "forcible rape" to the lexicon this week -- Pitts is no stranger to the abortion debate. But pro-choice advocates say his new law goes farther than any other bill has in encroaching on the rights of women to obtain an abortion when their health is at stake. They say the bill is giant leap away from accepted law, and one they haven't heard many in the pro-life community openly discuss before.

Pitts' response to the complaints from pro-choice groups? Nothing to see here.

"Since the 1970s, existing law affirmed the right to refuse involvement in abortion in all circumstances," a spokesperson for Pitts told TPM.

"The Protect Life Act simply extends these provisions to the new law by inserting a provision that mirrors Hyde-Weldon," the spokesperson added, referring to current federal law banning spending on abortion and allowing anti-abortion doctors to refrain from performing them while still receiving federal funds. "In other words, this bill is only preserving the same rights that medical professionals have had for decades."

A bit of backstory: currently, all hospitals in America that receive Medicare or Medicaid funding are bound by a 1986 law known as EMTALA to provide emergency care to all comers, regardless of their ability to pay or other factors. Hospitals do not have to provide free care to everyone that arrives at their doorstep under EMTALA -- but they do have to stabilize them and provide them with emergency care without factoring in their ability to pay for it or not. If a hospital can't provide the care a patient needs, it is required to transfer that patient to a hospital that can, and the receiving hospital is required to accept that patient.

In the case of an anti-abortion hospital with a patient requiring an emergency abortion, ETMALA would require that hospital to perform it or transfer the patient to someone who can. (The nature of how that procedure works exactly is up in the air, with the ACLU calling on the federal government to state clearly that unwillingness to perform an abortion doesn't qualify as inability under EMTALA. That argument is ongoing, and the government has yet to weigh in.)

Pitts' new bill would free hospitals from any abortion requirement under EMTALA, meaning that medical providers who aren't willing to terminate pregnancies wouldn't have to -- nor would they have to facilitate a transfer.

The hospital could literally do nothing at all, pro-choice critics of Pitts' bill say.

"This is really out there," Donna Crane, policy director at NARAL Pro-Choice America told TPM. "I haven't seen this before."

Last month job creation was at an anemic 36,000. There is snow in Texas, there are floods and category 5 cyclones in Australia. Arctic ice is thinner than ever before. The Middle East is exploding. One in eight Americans needs food stamps to put food on the table. But all that Republican men care about is that the Evil Daughters of Eve be "punished" by forced continuation of pregnancies that will end up killing them -- so that they can deliver hopelessly deformed babies with no chance of survival. It's not about the babies. It's not about human life and it never was. Because these men do not see women as human. I've asked in the past at what point in the minds of these people when women cease to be human and become mere vessels. We now have our answer: It's always.

UPDATE: Best quote on this comes from, of all people, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs:

According to the “pro-life” GOP, an unborn fetus is a person — but a woman is not.

And there's more, from LGF and elsewhere:

Arkansas Anti-Choicers Reject Abortion Restriction Bill Because it Includes Exceptions for Rape and Incest

South Dakota Seeks to Force Women into Crisis Pregnancy Centers

Kansas House panel considers new abortion limits

And New Jerseyans who didn't think Chris Christie was going to shove his own religious beliefs into your homes, guess again: Abortion rights, in peril in New Jersey

Heh. If the Democrats had the slightest idea how to frame things, they'd call this bill the Human Sacrifice Encouragement Act of 2011.

The misogyny of Republican men knows no bounds

Just as the Democratic Party exists so that we can delude ourselves that we have electoral choices, Republican women like Michele Bachmann, Sharron Angle, and Sarah Palin exist so that conservative women can delude themselves that the men in their party don't hate their guts.

Another shining representative from the "The Bitch Was Askin' For It" Party:

U.S. House Republicans have received a great deal of attention over the past week since seeking to qualify the crime of rape with the term “forcible” in a high-profile piece of legislation. Such a distinction could create classes of rape victims, with “forcible rape” victims somehow being ordained as worse off than victims of statutory rape, date rape, rape by coercion or deception, rape of the disabled or mentally impaired… You get the picture.

But what if rape victims could no longer be referred to as “victims” at all? What if people who have endured this horrible – and already chronically underreported -- crime could only be called “accusers”?

Georgia Republican state Rep. Bobby Franklin (of gold-standard-wannabe fame) has introduced a bill to change the state’s criminal codes so that in “criminal law and criminal procedure” (read: in court), victims of rape, stalking, and family violence could only be referred to as “accusers” until the defendant has been convicted.

Burglary victims are still victims. Assault victims are still victims. Fraud victims are still victims. But if you have the misfortune to suffer a rape, or if you are beaten by a domestic partner, or if you are stalked, Rep. Franklin doesn’t think you’ve been victimized. He says you’re an accuser until the courts have determined otherwise.

To diminish a victim’s ordeal by branding him/her an accuser essentially questions whether the crime committed against the victim is a crime at all. Robbery, assault, and fraud are all real crimes with real victims, the Republican asserts with this bill.

(Via Angry Black Lady. And yeah, what she said.)

Utah: The Misogynist State

Here's how one Utah Republican lawmaker thinks his state should save a few bucks:

Under the theory that perhaps thousands of Utah college students are having babies paid for by Medicaid that they could pay for themselves, one lawmaker has a plan: cut all elective epidurals and elective C-sections.

Sen. Dan Liljenquist, R-Bountiful, has vowed massive Medicaid reform in next year's legislative session, and first on the list is people who may be freeloading. Medicaid pays for 15,000 births a year in Utah, a third of the total, Liljenquist says.

"Do we save some kid or make birth easier?" he said, noting that the waiting list for Medicaid in Utah just for the disabled has reached 4,400 people.

Liljenquist says the state could save millions. Epidurals, a shot given in the spine, are a common method of relieving pain during labor. At Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in Provo, 86 to 87 percent of women who deliver babies at the hospital get an epidural; studies show about 65 percent of births nationwide happen with an epidural.

Cesarean births have risen to nearly a third of all births nationwide and cost nearly double a vaginal birth. The average charge for a Cesarean delivery in Utah County in 2008 was $8,989, according to the Utah Department of Health. In 2008, the average cost of a vaginal birth in the county was $5,079, but that does not include an epidural.

On Wednesday, a group of senators including Liljenquist had an animated discussion about the matter after meeting informally on the Senate floor.

"These are 90 percent out-of-state students having babies on our dime," Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, told Liljenquist, referring to BYU students. Conservative lawmakers have been upset about anecdotal evidence of students with a Lexus and trust fund having a baby under Medicaid. They qualify because there may technically be no income.

Yeah. Let the dirty sluts writhe in pain. That'll teach them.

What kind of sick fucks is the Republican Pafrty putting into office these days, anyway? Between Louie Gomert standing on the floor of the House with his litany of sexual practices that most of us never even think about, or Man-on-Dog Santorum, or Lindsey Graham talking about illegal immigrant women coming her to "drop a child", the fear and loathing that Republican men have for women is indisputable. Given the private lives of all too many Republican legislators, what goes on in their heads about women is something I don't think any of us really want to know.

It's illegal now to be a fertile woman in Utah

So it's official now: If you have a miscarriage in Utah, you can be subject to criminal investigation:

Gov. Gary Herbert signed into law Monday a bill that would allow a woman who arranges an illegal abortion to be charged with criminal homicide.

The new law is in response to a case last year where a 17-year-old pregnant girl paid a man $150 to beat her in hopes of inducing a miscarriage. A judge ruled there was no law on Utah's books allowing the mother to be charged with a crime.

The bill's original version drew national headlines because it allowed criminal charges if the mother's behavior was "reckless." That raised concerns that a mother who fell on the ice or was an avid jogger and suffered a miscarriage could be charged with a crime.

Herbert balked at signing that language and the bill's sponsor, Rep. Carl Wimmer, R-Herriman, quickly revised the legislation to remove the word "reckless."

Herbert vetoed the original legislation, HB12, Monday -- his first veto as a governor -- and signed the revised version, HB462.

"I appreciate the willingness of Representative Wimmer to re-evaluate the impact of potential unintended consequences arising from the inclusion of 'reckless' behavior" in the original bill, Herbert wrote in his veto letter. "[The revised bill] is more consistent with the true intent of the legislation and addresses those situations in which the termination of a pregnancy is intentional and is not conducted at a physician's direction."

Let's say you're trying to quit smoking once you get pregnant, and you fall off the wagon. Or you have a glass of wine ONE night while out with friends. Or you're shoveling snow because, say, your husband just shipped out to Afghanistan. And then you have a miscarriage. None of these things can be construed as "reckless" (though for some purists, perhaps the glass of wine can), but all of them could subject you to criminal investigation as an "illegal abortion."

Between ten and twenty percent of known pregnancies end in miscarriage. The number of actual miscarriages, including those which happen before pregnancy is confirmed, brings the number up closer to 20-30%. This means that two to three in every 10 women who become pregnant will have a miscarriage, for a variety of reasons. In some ways, the legislation was better off before they deleted the word "reckless." Because now, any woman who becomes pregnant in Utah has to worry about miscarriage, not just because of the loss, but because a miscarriage in Utah now makes you a suspected criminal.

Still think they'll stop with abortion?

If you are a pregnant woman in Utah, you are no longer a human being

Nope. If you become pregnant in the state of Utah, you are no longer a human being; you are simply a vessel for a fetus. If you have a miscarriage, the onus will be on you to prove that you didn't act in a "reckless" way:

The Utah Senate has joined the House in allowing homicide charges against expectant mothers who arrange illegal abortions.

The bill responds to a case in which a Vernal woman allegedly paid a man $150 to beat her and cause miscarriage but could not be charged. The Senate on Thursday approved HB12 on a vote of 24-4, criminalizing a woman's "intentional, knowing, or reckless act" leading to a pregnancy's illegal termination. It specifies that a woman cannot be prosecuted for arranging a legal abortion.

The measure now goes to Gov. Gary Herbert for final action.

Some Senate Democrats attempted a last-minute amendment to remove the word "reckless" from the list of criminal acts leading to miscarriage. They argued that criminalizing reckless acts leaves open the possibility of prosecutions against domestic violence victims who return to their abusers only to be beaten and lose the child.

"It's part of the cycle of domestic violence," said Sen. Luz Robles, D-Salt Lake City.

"I hope none of you ever have to face that situation," she said after realizing the majority would pass the bill as is, "or have a daughter facing that situation, or a granddaughter."

But the bill's sponsor, Sen. Margaret Dayton, R-Orem, said the bill doesn't target victims at all -- only those who arrange to terminate their pregnancies illegally.

"I know it's well-intentioned," Dayton said of the attempt to lift "reckless acts" from the bill, "but I don't think we want to go down the road of carefully defining the behavior of a woman."

Except that's exactly what this bill does. It gives the state the power to decide, on a case-by-case basis, what constitutes "reckless behavior". It completely removes a pregnant woman's autonomy over her own body, deletes her humanity and turns her into an incubator. I wonder what this law would have done with someone who gets on an airplane after her water breaks, flies 4 hours, gets on another plane and flies more hours, then drives more hours and hours to get to a hospital. Would that then be reckless behavior then, Father?

If you still think the fetophiles are just about Teh BAYBEEEZZZZZZZZZZZZZ, think about how this legislation turns pregnant women into automatons and presumes that they are criminals. Then see if you still believe this is about anything other than hatred of women.

And stay the hell out of Utah if you want to be regarded as human.

(via)

In case you thought that the House health care "reform" bill wasn't a craptacular piece of misogynistic swill

It isn't just abortion that isn't covered, it's just about everything having to do with women's health care:

None of the bills emerging from the House and Senate require insurers to cover all the elements of a standard gynecological "well visit," leaving essential care such as pelvic exams, domestic violence screening, counseling about sexually transmitted diseases, and, perhaps most startlingly, the provision of birth control off the list of basic benefits all insurers must cover. Nor are these services protected from "cost sharing," which means that, depending on what's in the bill that emerges from the Senate, and, later, the contents of a final bill, women could wind up having to pay for some of these services out of their own pockets. So far, mammograms and Pap tests are covered in every version of the legislation.

Granted, Congress can't--and shouldn't--get into the business of spelling out every possible cause for a trip to the doctor. No one wants the process to collapse under a mountain of requests from special interest groups à la the Clinton mess in 1993. But women, half of all adult patients, are not a special interest group. And since both the House and Senate bills include lists of specific services that must be covered by health insurance companies and be provided without asking patients for additional money, it's hard to understand why all the services provided in a basic well-woman visit to the gynecologist isn't on them along with maternity care, newborn care, pediatric dental and vision services, and substance use disorder services.

The fault for the initial omission can be laid at the feet of Democrats, who shied away from the issue, not wanting to invite controversy, according to women's health advocates who tried unsuccessfully to get women's preventive health care included in the basic benefits package. Some of the concern had to do with cost. Adding any required service to the basic benefits package would mean the Congressional Budget Office would give the bill a higher score, or price tag, leaving it more vulnerable to attack by budget hawks. But another part of the problem clearly stems from the fact that women's bodies have become political lightening rods, even when abortion is not the issue.

Because after all, if we aren't producing babies for the Christofascist Zombie Brigade, they'd just as soon we all just FOAD.

(via...)

Republicans who oppose health care reform betray their "family values"

That Republicans hate women is no secret. Between "scarlet letter" abortion laws like the one in Oklahoma, thankfully stopped by the courts, the New Jersey Republican gubernatorial candidate calling young women with breast cancer "exceptions", and current health insurance company policies that regard rape as a pre-exisitng condition, you'd be hard-pressed to justify why the continuation of the current system is a good thing. And yet, Republicans do. Whether it's simply a matter of wanting to destroy Barack Obama for cheap political gain, or a function of their deep-seated fear and loathing of women remains to be seen. But there comes a point where their loathing of health care reform and their loathing of women hits the wall of their simultaneous Babies über Alles doctrine.

And here it is:

So at the same time as Republicans oppose the idea that women should be able to decide not to reproduce if they don't want to, it's perfectly OK for insurance companies to withhold coverage unless women are sterilized.

And this makes sense to anyone?

If the Republicans keep this up there won't be anyone left to support them

Let's see, they've alienated Black and Latino Americans already, and today they may have just eliminated the women:

“General Pelosi has no problem sacrificing her own credibility as the Obama administration and liberals in Congress attempt to walk back a strategy they strongly advocated just months ago,” said NRCC Communications Director Ken Spain. “Nancy Pelosi continues to make party politics a higher priority than our national security. Rather than listening to a four-star general’s assessments on Afghanistan, General Pelosi somehow believes she is better suited to craft our country’s military policy.”

If Nancy Pelosi’s failed economic policies are any indicator of the effect she may have on Afghanistan, taxpayers can only hope McChrystal is able to put her in her place.

Yes, folks, this is the Republicans' new theme song for its female outreach:

A giant leap forward into the 1890s

Who knew John Derbyshire was this old?

John Derbyshire, a British-American conservative author and columnist for the National Review, has written a new book titled We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism. The book contains a section called “The Case Against Female Suffrage.” Yesterday on his radio show, Alan Colmes asked Derbyshire to articulate his argument.

“What is the case against female suffrage?” Colmes asked. “The conservative case against it is that women lean hard to the left,” Derbyshire responded nonsensically. “They want someone to nurture, they want someone to help raise their kids, and if men aren’t inclined to do it — and in the present days, they’re not much — then they’d like the state to do it for them.”

Colmes then pressed Derbyshire on whether women should have the right to vote. “Ah…” Derbyshire sighed, attempting to dodge the question initially. “I’m not putting forward a political program here,” he said. But then Derbyshire slowly began to open up:

DERBYSHIRE: Among the hopes that I do not realistically nurse is the hope that female suffrage will be repealed. But I’ll say this – if it were to be, I wouldn’t lose a minute’s sleep.

COLMES: We’d be a better country if women didn’t vote?

DERBYSHIRE: Probably. Don’t you think so?

COLMES: No, I do not think so whatsoever.

DERBYSHIRE: Come on Alan. Come clean here [laughing].

COLMES: We would be a better country? John Derbyshire making the statement, we would be a better country if women did not vote.

DERBYSHIRE: Yeah, probably.

Derbyshire, for the uninitiated, is the sick, twisted man who in 2001 made a "historical" case at National Review Online for the killing of Chelsea Clinton so she could never hold office. You think I'm joking? Here it is.

And this fuckwad is likely to be the next Governor of New Jersey

Yes, let's not cover mammograms for young women with a family history of early-onset breast cancer, because it's "an exception":

And let's not cover testicular cancer either, because it's "an exception."

Look, I know that Jon Corzine has been ineffectual and unable or unwilling or not interested in reining in the rampant corruption that is endemic to the state Democratic Party. But I don't see how nominating a heartless ghoul like the pantload that is Chris Christie is going to solve anything.

(UPDATE: Marcy Wheeler talks about her own experience as "an exception" in the current health care system.)

Republicans Hate Women.

They don't want us to have abortions.

And they don't want to cover pregnancy care.

John Kyl (R-Narcissism) thinks that just because he doesn't need maternity care, it shouldn't be required:

Because after all, the world revolves around middle-aged Republican men who have spent their entire adult lives receiving government health cares.

They got theirs, and the hell with us.

Can't get laid? Become a wingnut

Lost in much of the coverage of George Sodini, who killed three women is the fact that he had political views about Barack Obama that mirror much of the "teabag" movement that is currently astroturfing Congressional town halls.

That Sodini channelled his bitterness into not just misogyny, but also racism, is hardly surprising, though it isn't as "sexy" as meticulously reprinting his more disturbing attitudes about women from his blog.

Greg Mitchell notes this particular passage from November 5, which makes us wonder why Sodini didn't, instead of hanging out in gyms, just go to teabag rallies:

Planned to do this in the summer but figure to stick around to see the election outcome. This particular one got so much attention and I was just curious. Not like I give a flying fcuk who won, since this exit plan was already planned. Good luck to Obama! He will be successful. The liberal media LOVES him. Amerika has chosen The Black Man. Good! In light of this I got ideas outside of Obama's plans for the economy and such. Here it is: Every black man should get a young white girl hoe to hone up on. Kinda a reverse indentured servitude thing. Long ago, many a older white male landowner had a young Negro wench girl for his desires. Bout' time tables are turned on that shit. Besides, dem young white hoez dig da bruthrs! LOL. More so than they dig the white dudes! Every daddy know when he sends his little girl to college, she be bangin a bruthr real good. I saw it. "Not my little girl", daddy says! (Yeah right!!) Black dudes have thier choice of best white hoez. You do the math, there are enough young white so all the brothers can each have one for 3 or 6 months or so.

Another racist white privilege advocate, more people dead. You'd think that the media would stop glorifying these thugs. Sodini actually pulled the trigger. The people screaming at these rallies are only one short step away from it.

What do you do when law enforcement doesn't enforce the law

As if I weren't angry enough over the murder of Dr. George Tiller, this segment from last night's Countdown made me want to just run down the street screaming:

If law enforcement is going to be selective when dealing with the threat of violence at funerals and medical clinics, when local police refuse to protect physicians and women from violence from terrorists, when protection is only for the insane who call themselves "Christians" and "patriots" and other false monikers of the extreme right, then there is no law. If the right to self-determination can be taken away at the barrel of a gun, then there is no right. And then all the talk about preserving Roe is preposterous. Because where women are concerned, we are now allowing individual white men with a grievance and a gun to decide our destinies. For women seeking to control their reproductive destiny, there is no equal protection under the law in many states. The rights of men to channel their rage over watching their world change into violence against women and their doctors trump all.

And if you think I'm being overly dramatic, Blue Girl has unearthed the information that Scott Roeder, the terrorist who murdered Dr. George Tiller, vandalized a women's health care clinic the day before he murdered Dr. Tiller:

Scott Roeder was no stranger to law enforcement, and in fact, he should have been under surveillance since he was caught with bomb making supplies in the mid 90s when he was involved with the "sovereign citizen" movement and militant anti-abortion groups.

On May 23, he vandalized a clinic in Kansas City, Kansas then returned on Saturday morning, May 30 to vandalize the clinic again. The clinic manager filed police reports in both instances, and on Saturday, about 24 hours before Dr. Tiller was gunned down in the foyer of his church, the clinic manager gave the FBI Roeder's license plate and a description of his car.

He had a radical, militant history that ought to have drawn flags all over the field.

I don't know about you, but I would rather police resources be spent tailing and infiltrating the circle of guys like Roeder, who had already threatened a physician in the KC area, where he walked into a clinic, asked to see the doctor and waited patiently for him to come out to talk to him. When the doctor came out, Roeder stared at him for about 45 seconds before saying "Okay, I've seen you now," and turning and walking out. He had also posted on the Operation Rescue website that he wanted to confront Dr. Tiller in his church.

All the warning signs were there, and he had escalated his direct actions recently. His previous bomb-making conviction and ties to domestic terrorist groups should have popped up the minute his plate was run, and agents should have made a visit to his house and brought him in for questioning and held him in the clinic vandalism and this whole tragedy could have been avoided.

But in Kansas, it's clear that the law enforcement apparatus didn't WANT this tragedy to be avoided. And it's quite clear that in the state of Kansas, terrorists are allowed to run freely, vandalizing clinics and threatening doctors, because in Kansas, the police only enforce the laws they want to.

That's a notion that should scare us no matter where we live.

This is what they want American women to endure

Funny how none of the fetophile zealots will ever say that they think a woman should be prosecuted for having an abortion. They know that none but the most rabid zealots will want to see women put in jail, or executed, for wanting to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. And that is where their logic cracks. Because if abortion is murder, then it is the woman who first decides to have one long before the doctor who performs the procedure is ever contacted, who premeditates the crime. So why the squishiness about prosecution?

That should be enough to expose these people for the misogynist hypocrites they are. But perhaps they don't need to endorse prosecution. Perhaps the wages of sin being mutilation or death will suffice for them.

Denise Grady writes in today's New York Times about the very real results of botched abortions where the procedure is not available -- in Tanzania:

Abortion is illegal in Tanzania (except to save the mother’s life or health), so women and girls turn to amateurs, who may dose them with herbs or other concoctions, pummel their bellies or insert objects vaginally. Infections, bleeding and punctures of the uterus or bowel can result, and can be fatal. Doctors treating women after these bungled attempts sometimes have no choice but to remove the uterus.

Worldwide, there are 19 million unsafe abortions a year, and they kill 70,000 women (accounting for 13 percent of maternal deaths), mostly in poor countries like Tanzania where abortion is illegal, according to the World Health Organization. More than two million women a year suffer serious complications. According to Unicef, unsafe abortions cause 4 percent of deaths among pregnant women in Africa, 6 percent in Asia and 12 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Reliable figures on abortion in Tanzania are hard to come by, but the World Health Organization reports that its region, Eastern Africa, has the world’s second-highest rate of unsafe abortions (only South America is higher). And Africa as a whole has the highest proportion of teenagers — 25 percent — among women having unsafe abortions.

The 120-bed hospital in Berega depends on solar panels and a generator, which is run for only a few hours a day. Short on staff members, supplies and even water, the hospital puts a lot of its scarce resources into cleaning up after failed abortions.

The medical director, Dr. Paschal Mdoe, 30, said many patients who had had the unsafe abortions were 16 to 20 years old, and four months pregnant. He said there was a steady stream of cases, much as he had seen in hospitals in other parts of the country.

“It’s the same everywhere,” he said.

On a Friday in January, 6 of 20 patients in the women’s ward were recovering from attempted abortions. One, a 25-year-old schoolteacher, lay in bed moaning and writhing. She had been treated at the hospital a week earlier for an incomplete abortion and now was back, bleeding and in severe pain. She was taken to the operating room once again and anesthetized, and Emmanuel Makanza, who had treated her the first time, discovered that he had failed to remove all the membranes formed during the pregnancy. Once again, he scraped the inside of her womb with a curet, a metal instrument. It was a vigorous, bloody procedure. This time, he said, it was complete.

This is what the anti-sex zealots of the right want for American women. This is their agenda for women here in the U.S. Do they think that making abortion illegal will stop the practice? It never has before, anywhere in the world. Why do they think the U.S. will be different?

We can therefore only assume that the real agenda, once you get past their phony rhetoric about human life, is punishing women who are unchaste. And it's high time we called them on it. Because there is no common ground with such people.