It’s not just forced ultrasound: Abortion rights under assault

From Salon:  http://www.salon.com/2012/10/21/its_not_just_forced_ultrasound_abortion_rights_under_assault/?source=newsletter

In 2012, some 1,100 bills targeted reproductive rights — and 135 passed in 36 states. The cost? Women’s health

By
Sunday, Oct 21, 2012

A young girl in a green tank top lies on the examination table in a stark exam room in a Houston clinic. Her pink toenails dangle belowthe sterile covering draped over her thighs. The doctor inserts a probe between her legs and the two watch a grainy blob blossom on a sonogram screen suspended below the room’s industrial fluorescent lights. He gives a state-mandated description of the fetus: almost exactly seven weeks, he says, “nice and early.” She is well within the time frame for an abortion pill, rather than surgery.

The doctor, an avuncular, silver-haired man who’s been providing abortions, in the words of one colleague, “pretty much since Roe v. Wade,” turns the screen toward her and traces the outline of her uterus and the embryo, while the girl looks on blankly. He plays the heartbeat, which rises from the machine in a loud, shrill electronic pulse. The ritual, which is repeated several times a day at this Planned Parenthood in Houston and in clinics across the state, is mandated by a new Texas law designed to intensify the experience of abortion — to impress upon a woman, with images and sounds, the sense that she’s about to terminate a living thing.

Ultrasounds are a routine procedure at Planned Parenthood and many other clinics, a tool doctors use to gauge gestational stage — which can affect which procedure to use — or to detect complications. Some abortion patients prefer to see the sonogram, others are indifferent, others are traumatized by the very idea. But the new law makes displaying the ultrasound mandatory. Under Texas law, even if a woman averts her eyes, the doctor must give a verbal description of the fetus anyway. And it’s just the latest addition to a bureaucratic juggernaut of regulations that restrict how abortion providers practice in Texas.

In recent years, lawmakers across the country have enacted a dizzying array of arcane rules dictating everything from the dimensions of their buildings to the advice they must offer to patients about “abortion alternatives.” Thirty-five states, including Texas, have enacted pre-abortion counseling laws, which in many cases force women to make extra clinic visits. Legislatures in 10 states have introduced new measures for pre-abortion counseling and waiting periods in 2012. In addition, 18 states have introduced bills for ultrasound requirements this year, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research institute.

Continue reading at:  http://www.salon.com/2012/10/21/its_not_just_forced_ultrasound_abortion_rights_under_assault/?source=newsletter

Posted in Abortion, Choice, Feminist, Health Care, Medicine, Misogyny, Reproductive Rights, Right Wing Bug F*** Insanity, Right Wing Extermist, Uncategorized. Comments Off on It’s not just forced ultrasound: Abortion rights under assault

“Like a Dog?” Nasty GOP Insults Flung at Women Candidates

From Alternet:  http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/dog-nasty-gop-insults-flung-women-candidates

Todd Akin put his foot in his mouth again with comments about his opponent, while Mayor Michael Bloomberg attacked Elizabeth Warren.

By Alex Kane
October 22, 2012

Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin can’t stop putting his foot in his mouth.

During an October 20 fundraising event with Fox News star and evangelical Christian Mike Huckabee, Akin compared Claire McCaskill to a “dog.” McCaskill is Akin’s Democratic opponent for the Senate seat.

“She goes to Washington, D.C., it’s a little bit like one of those dogs, ‘fetch,’” said Akin, according to the website PoliticMO.com . “She goes to Washington, D.C., and get all of these taxes and red tape and bureaucracy and executive orders and agencies and brings all of this stuff and dumps it on us in Missouri.”

The comments  are only the latest controversial remarks from Akin. He became a household name in August when he claimed on television that “legitimate rape” victims rarely get pregnant because “ the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Akin also said last month that McCaskill’s debate performance against him was not as “ladylike” as she was in 2006.

Akin is trailing McCaskill narrowly in the polls.

Meanwhile, another male, conservative politician has hammered away inaccurately at a female candidate. In a New York Times interview, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg threw his weight behind Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, who is running against the progressive Elizabeth Warren. Bloomberg told the Times that a vote for Warren is a vote to “bring socialism back, or the USSR.”

Complete article at:  http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/dog-nasty-gop-insults-flung-women-candidates

Posted in Equal Treatment, Feminist, Male Privilege, Misogyny, Politics, Right Wing Bigotry, Right Wing Bug F*** Insanity, Right Wing Extermist, Sexism, Uncategorized. Comments Off on “Like a Dog?” Nasty GOP Insults Flung at Women Candidates

Meet Romney’s Economic Hit Man

From Truth Dig:  http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/meet_romneys_economic_hit_man_20121018/

By Robert Scheer
on Oct 18, 2012

Mark the name of R. Glenn Hubbard, the man who will make your life miserable if Mitt Romney is elected president. Unless, that is, you happen to be one of the swindlers who has profited mightily from the nation’s economic pain.

Hubbard is the ideological hit man instrumental in justifying the mortgage derivatives bubble that caused the Great Recession during the George W. Bush years. He now serves as Romney’s key economic adviser and is the front-runner to be the next Treasury secretary should the Republican win.

“Romney’s Go-To Economist” read the headline on a New York Times profile of the dean of Columbia University’s Business School, which notes that “During a stint as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for President George W. Bush, from 2001 to 2003, Mr. Hubbard was known as the principal architect of the Bush tax cuts.” In that capacity, and after returning to Columbia, Hubbard was also the chief cheerleader for a runaway derivatives market that spiraled out of control and left the Great Recession in its wake.

While pocketing millions in fees from the financial industry that he was ostensibly studying as a neutral academic, Hubbard was an enthusiastic backer of the virtues of a burgeoning unregulated capital market that sold toxic derivatives to the world. In a landmark paper that he co-wrote in November 2004 with William C. Dudley, at the time the chief U.S. economist at Goldman Sachs, it was asserted, “The capital markets have helped facilitate a major transformation of the U.S. mortgage financing system over the past 25 years. … The result has been a dramatic decline in the cyclical volatility of housing activity.”

Their study was published by the Global Markets Institute of Goldman Sachs at the very time that Goldman, a leader in the capital market, was packaging and selling some of the toxic mortgage-based derivatives that would come close to destroying the world’s economy.

Continue reading at:  http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/meet_romneys_economic_hit_man_20121018/

Posted in Class War, Economic Issues, Hard Times, Right Wing Extermist. Comments Off on Meet Romney’s Economic Hit Man

Mitt Romney’s Heartless Advice to a Woman Whose Pregnancy Might Have Killed Her

From Alternet:  http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/mitt-romneys-heartless-advice-woman-whose-pregnancy-might-have-killed-her

Mormon women remember Romney’s advice when he was a church leader, and there wasn’t much ‘moderate’ about it.

By Geoffrey Dunn
October 17, 2012

The summer of 1983 was blistering hot in New England. A record heat wave saw temperatures soar toward the 100-degree mark from June well into September. July had been the hottest month ever recorded at Boston’s Logan Airport.

The region’s beloved Boston Red Sox, full of hope and promise early in spring and claiming first place in the American League East as late as June 1, apparently melted in the heat, losing game after game and tumbling to last place by mid-July, where they were to remain the rest of the season.

It was also during the sweltering summer of 1983 that the family of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney made its celebrated escape from the oppressive New England heat for the cooler climes of Beach O’Pines, Ontario, where the Romney family owns a beachfront cottage in a gated community on the shores of Lake Huron. Prior to departure, Mitt Romney placed the family dog—an Irish setter named Seamus—into a dog carrier and lashed it to the roof of the family’s Chevy station wagon for the 12-hour drive into Canada.

The infamous dog ride (dubbed the “Seamus incident”) was to become a full-blown issue in the 2012 presidential primaries, as Romney’s chief Republican opponent, Rick Santorum, invoked the incident to attack Romney’s “character.”

Political cartoonists and late-night comedians had a field day with the story. The incident inspired aNew Yorker cover, while the punk band Devo recorded a song entitled, “Don’t Roof Rack Me, Bro.” ABC’s Diane Sawyer, in an interview with Romney during the primaries, dubbed it the “most wounding thing in the campaign so far.”

Continue reading at:  http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/mitt-romneys-heartless-advice-woman-whose-pregnancy-might-have-killed-her

Posted in Abortion, Choice, Christo-Fascism, Feminist, Male Privilege, Misogyny, Religion, Reproductive Rights, Right Wing Bigotry, Right Wing Bug F*** Insanity, Right Wing Extermist, Sexism. Comments Off on Mitt Romney’s Heartless Advice to a Woman Whose Pregnancy Might Have Killed Her

Illinois Family Institute, Anti-Gay Hate Group, Condemns School For Transgender-Inclusive Policies

From Huffington Post:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/17/anti-gay-group-condemns-school-transgender-inclusive-policies_n_1974096.html?ref=topbar

10/17/2012

An Illinois anti-gay Christian hate group voiced its condemnation of a newly affirmed school policy for transgender-inclusion, claiming the “feckless school board has made a decision to accommodate, not the needs of gender-confused teens, but their disordered desires.”

The East Aurora school board voted Oct. 15 to approve a policy that addresses the needs and rights of transgender and other non gender-conforming students, with policies such as allowing the student to use the restroom he or she associates with and using the modified name he or she has chosen, The Beacon-News reported.

On Tuesday, the Illinois Family Institue released an angry vitriol against the new transgender-inclusive policies.

“Apparently, all that’s needed for school personnel to be compelled to participate in a fiction is for a student to pretend ‘consistently’ at school that he or she is the opposite sex.The school board is now imposing non-objective, ‘progressive’ moral, philosophical, and political beliefs—not facts—about gender confusion on the entire school. This feckless school board has made a decision to accommodate, not the needs of gender-confused teens, but their disordered desires and the desires of gender/sexuality anarchists who exploit public education for their perverse ends.”

The IFI goes on to say transgender individuals “suffer” from a “mental and moral disorder.” The group calls the school board’s decision “biased, radical, and offensive” to taxpayers, warning that it could very well “embolden activists all over the state and country.”

Continue reading at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/17/anti-gay-group-condemns-school-transgender-inclusive-policies_n_1974096.html?ref=topbar

Posted in Bullying, Christo-Fascism, Equal Treatment, Gay, Hate Speech, Misogyny, Right Wing Bigotry, Right Wing Bug F*** Insanity, Right Wing Extermist, Transgender, Transphobia, Transsexual. Tags: . Comments Off on Illinois Family Institute, Anti-Gay Hate Group, Condemns School For Transgender-Inclusive Policies

How Propagandists for the 1% Are Manipulating Christian Teachings to Rob the Middle Class

From Alternet:  http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/how-propagandists-1-are-manipulating-christian-teachings-rob-middle-class

The neoliberal utopianism that caused the financial crisis has been repackaged for the 2012 election.

By Michael Meurer
October 17, 2012

 In the endless swirl of headlines about the current global financial crisis, the dominant narrative, which is also driving the 2012 US presidential election, is that crippling amounts of public debt run up by profligate government spending have brought us to the brink of financial ruin and must be offset by deep cuts in social services and “entitlements.”

It is a false narrative that masks the largest ongoing financial swindle in human history, a swindle being carried out at public expense by a small class of elite financial speculators. This speculative class has been unleashed over the past three decades by a Utopian neoliberal political project now embodied in its most virulent form in the Republican presidential ticket of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.

Let’s start with the depth and size of the underlying financial crisis, which is almost in the realm of hyper-reality. In 1997, for example, the total value of annual financial transactions worldwide was an already-staggering 15 times greater than global GDP. Today, it is 70 times greater . (1) In 1995, the six largest US banks controlled assets worth 17 percent of annual GDP. Today, the figure is 64 percent . (2) Again in 1995, the global total of outstanding derivative debt obligations was $17.7 trillion. By 2010, at nearly $470 trillion , outstanding derivatives were 741 percent of global GDP . (3)

This wholesale financialization of the US-led global economy has burdened the public sector with the task of propping up unregulated speculative debt in the private sector that is 7.4 times our annual productive capacity. Add US deficit spending for three wars since 9/11, and major cuts in the top tax rates, and the burden becomes unsustainable. The difference is being made up in the guise of austerity, as everything we own is liquidated, from personal and retirement savings, to homes and public-sector assets that have been built up over generations.

In the US, the inexorable logic of this process is embedded in the numbers that comprise the national debt. By most estimates, the national debt is at least $15 trillion .(4) Here is one way to understand where the money went.

Continue reading at:  http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/how-propagandists-1-are-manipulating-christian-teachings-rob-middle-class

Posted in Christo-Fascism, Right Wing Bigotry, Right Wing Extermist, Uncategorized. Tags: , . Comments Off on How Propagandists for the 1% Are Manipulating Christian Teachings to Rob the Middle Class

On CNN: Hate Group Leader Bryan Fischer Says Nazis Were Gay And Gays Are Like Cyanide. Anchor Ends Interview.

From The New Civil Rights Movement:  http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/on-cnn-bryan-fischer-says-gays-are-nazis-and-are-like-cyanide-cnn-anchor-ends-interview/media/2012/10/16/51365

by David Badash
on October 16, 2012

Bryan Fischer today repeated his claim to CNN anchor Carol Costello that gays are Nazis in a discussion about the eleven-year old annual “Mix It Up Day,” an opportunity to teach tolerance to children in schools. Fischer attacked gays, the Southern Poverty Law Center(SPLC), and Mix It Up Day, interrupting Costello several times and lying throughout the interview. Costello finally did what every LGBTQ person, equality ally, and decent human being in America has been waiting for the main stream media to do to Bryan Fischer and other hate groups members: She said, “that’s just not true,” and ended the interview.

Mix It Up Day “is a thinly-veiled attempt to push the normalization of homosexual behavior in public schools and to eventually punish students who express a Judeo-Christian view of homosexuality,” Fischer claimed. This morning on Twitter Fischer called the Southern Poverty Law Center a “pro-bullying hate group.”

READ: Fischer: “Hitler Was A Homosexual”

“What parents need to understand, this is about pressuring public schools and students in public schools to accept homosexuality as a normal, healthy alternative to heterosexuality,” Fischer told Costello.

“You know, it’s interesting to me they’re doing this on October 30, the day before Halloween, and what this program is, it’s like poisoned Halloween candy. Somebody takes a candy bar, injects it with cyanide, the label looks fine, it looks innocuous, it looks fine, it’s not until you internalize it that you realize how toxic it is. And we want parents to be aware that any program that any program that comes from the Southern Poverty Law Center is going to be toxic to their students’ moral health.”

Fischer claimed the Southern Poverty Law Center is about bullying, silencing, and intimidating Christian students.

Continue reading at:  http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/on-cnn-bryan-fischer-says-gays-are-nazis-and-are-like-cyanide-cnn-anchor-ends-interview/media/2012/10/16/51365

Posted in Christo-Fascism, Hate Speech, Homophobia, Lesbian, LGBT/T, Misogyny, Nazism, Right Wing Bigotry, Right Wing Bug F*** Insanity, Right Wing Extermist, Transphobia. Comments Off on On CNN: Hate Group Leader Bryan Fischer Says Nazis Were Gay And Gays Are Like Cyanide. Anchor Ends Interview.

Right Wing Hate Group Leader Bryan Fischer: ‘Political Leadership Ought to be Reserved for the Hands of Males’

Posted in Christo-Fascism, Hate Speech, Misogyny, Right Wing Bigotry, Right Wing Bug F*** Insanity, Right Wing Extermist, Sexism. Comments Off on Right Wing Hate Group Leader Bryan Fischer: ‘Political Leadership Ought to be Reserved for the Hands of Males’

Female Tea Party Leader Says Women Are Too ‘Diabolical’ to Vote

From Alternet:  http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/female-tea-party-leader-says-women-are-too-diabolical-vote

The remarks against women voting came from Janis Lane, the president of the Central Mississippi Tea Party.

By Alex Kane
October 16, 2012

A female Tea Party leader came out against women having the right to vote in an interview with the Jackson Free Press.

Journalist R.L. Nave decided to take a look at the Tea Party in Mississippi, given the movement’s influence on Republican politics. Nave interviewed Janis Lane, a former marketing manager who is now the Central Mississippi Tea Party president. Nave also sat down with Kim Wade, a Nation of Islam member-turned conservative radio talk host, and another Tea Party activist named Mark Mayfield.

Nave asked about men getting involved in the reproductive decisions of women. Part of Lane’s response was to say that “probably the biggest turn we ever made was when the women got the right to vote.”

Questioned by Nave on what exactly she means, the Tea Party leader doubled down. “Our country might have been better off if it was still just men voting. There is nothing worse than a bunch of mean, hateful women. They are diabolical in how [they] can skewer a person,” said Lane. “I do not see that in men. The whole time I worked, I’d much rather have a male boss than a female boss. Double-minded, you never can trust them.”

Complete article at:  http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/female-tea-party-leader-says-women-are-too-diabolical-vote

Posted in Misogyny, Right Wing Bigotry, Right Wing Bug F*** Insanity, Right Wing Extermist, Sexism. Comments Off on Female Tea Party Leader Says Women Are Too ‘Diabolical’ to Vote

Illinois: Antibullying Bill Rejected From Fears of Being Too Pro-Gay

From The Advocate:  http://www.advocate.com/society/education/2012/05/23/illinois-antibullying-bill-rejected-fears-being-too-progay

BY Michelle Garcia
May 23 2012

Illinois legislators rejected an antibullying bill after conservatives expressed fears that the proposed law was too “pro-homosexual.”

The initiative, which would have held school administrators more accountable for handling bullying incidents and preventing harassment, fell one vote short of passing in the state Senate on Tuesday, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

“There are some programs that are just against bullying in general,” Sen. Kyle McCarter said in the article. “Some of them tend to have an agenda of being pro-homosexual.”

Complete article at:  http://www.advocate.com/society/education/2012/05/23/illinois-antibullying-bill-rejected-fears-being-too-progay

Woman files lawsuit because she can’t harass transgender customers

It is a shame that the first thing one thinks when someone proclaims themselves to be a “Christian” is, “There stands a delusional person who is a bigot and a compulsive liar.”

Particularly when they describe themselves as born again, or “religious”.  Get ready for the bigoted lies and bullshit to start flowing.

I’m tired of Christo-Fascist bullying of business that try to be fair and respect the rights and dignity of minorities.

See first the original story:  Woman files lawsuit because she can’t harass transgender customers

From Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters:  http://holybulliesandheadlessmonsters.blogspot.com/2011/12/mat-staver-liberty-counsel-doubles-down.html

Mat Staver, Liberty Counsel doubles down on implausible story against Macy’s

By Alvin McEwen
Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Reposted with permission

As Mat Staver and the Liberty Counsel continue milk the case of the former Macy’s employee who was fired for harassing a transgender customer, one has to wonder are they reading their own press.

Yesterday, I pointed out how Staver and the employee, Natalie Johnson, conducted several interviews in which they tried to whitewash the fact that Johnson’s actions violated Macy’s policy and that concerns about “religious liberty” and “men in women’s changing rooms” were a pitiful dodges.

I even hinted that the Liberty Counsel was “conjuring up” a story of an “anonymous” Macy’s employee troubled by the policy.

But in an interview with the phony news service One News Now today, Staver seems to be sticking to that story and making up new ones:

Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, now tells OneNewsNow that an employee of another store has told him she has persistent problems keeping men out of the women’s fitting room.

However, that’s not exactly what the Liberty Counsel said yesterday on its blog:

The employee said she constantly has to ask men to leave the women’s fitting rooms.

It may seem like an insignificant jump from “asking men to leave women’s fitting rooms” to “having persistent problems keeping men out of women’s fitting rooms,” but this jump only elucidates the questions I asked yesterday.

Those questions were:

Were these transgender women, rather than men accompanying their loved ones? These are two totally different situations.

And if these were transgender women, what are the odds of this employee having the ability to violate company policy without losing her job? If this woman had been truly asking transgender women to leave the fitting rooms, we would be hearing about this before now.

If this anonymous employee has had  “persistent problems” with transgender customers, then that would mean there was in fact conflict between her and those customers. And if this is the case, I refuse to believe that several transgender women in different cases would allow themselves to be disrespected and not complain, especially when the store policy is in their favor.

How is this woman continuing to keep her job in light of this possibility? Or does this woman even exist?

Then Staver tries to make it seem that there is a groundswell of negative reactions to Macy’s policy:

According to Liberty Counsel, the public is reacting.

“Consistently the people of America are saying that they will not shop at Macy’s,” explains Staver. “They’re tearing up their Macy’s credit cards, they’re sending back their Macy’s gift cards, they say that they will not shop at Macy’s — and this is a consistent response that we’re seeing from the public around the country.”

The Liberty Counsel founder says customers are “literally outraged and shocked” at Macy’s policy.

Staver conveniently doesn’t provide proof of this claim, just like neither he nor the Liberty Counsel has provided proof of the existence of the anonymous Macy’s employee.

To reiterate, I smell a rat.

Email Macy’s and send the company your support for standing up for our rights and dignity. And most of all, tell Macy’s to not back down. 

Right Wing Misogynist, Hannity blasts free birth control, defends free erection pills

From Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/08/hannity-blasts-free-birth-control-defends-free-erection-pills/

By Stephen C. Webster
August 5, 2011

In a bizarre Fox News segment Thursday night, right-wing talk show host Sean Hannity insisted that providing free birth control pills to women through their insurance is helping to build a “nanny state,” but giving men free pills to give them erections is just addressing a “medical problem.”

Posted in Fascism, Feminist, Health Care, Misogyny, Right Wing Extermist. Comments Off on Right Wing Misogynist, Hannity blasts free birth control, defends free erection pills