Evening Reads: Outrageous…bloody outrageous!
Posted: February 16, 2012 Filed under: abortion rights, Accommodation and Compromise, birth control, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, fetus fetishists, fundamentalist Christians, Health care reform, Human Rights, PLUB Pro-Life-Until-Birth, Psychopaths in charge, Religious Conscience, Reproductive Health, Reproductive Rights, Republican politics, SDB Evening News Reads, the GOP, U.S. Politics, Violence against women, War on Women, Women's Healthcare, Women's Rights | Tags: Iowa, state sanctioned rape, Texas, Virgina 10 Comments
I am so disgusted with today’s “hearing” on birth control that I can’t even express the way I feel without using phrases that contain words like… “Fuck” and “You” and “Assholes.’
Perhaps I should have warned you, this post contains language not safe for work, school, church…or congressional hearings.
So, here are the top headlines at Memeorandum:
A picture of the witness table:
Issa also dismissed the Democrats’ woman witness as a “college student’ who does not “have the appropriate credentials” to testify before his committee.
Darrell Issa Compares His All-Male Anti-Contraception Panel To Martin Luther King | ThinkProgress
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) has been catching flack for holding a panel today relating to women’s access to birth control that featured zero women, but Issa won’t let the fact that few Americans agree with his position deter him. Taking to Twitter this evening, he fired back with a always-appropriate Martin Luther King Jr. comparison:
Indeed, as King knew, the “arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” and depriving women who work for Catholic hospitals of affordable birth control. Issa’s hearing also featured giant posters of King and other historical greats whose footsteps the panel was apparently following in, like President Kennedy, and Mohandas Gandhi.
But as Adam Serwer points out, King actually wrote that he hoped state and federal governments would appropriate “large sums of money” to educate people about birth control.
Rep. Darrell Issa Bars Minority Witness, a Woman, on Contraception – ABC News
A Capitol Hill hearing that was supposed to be about religious freedom and a mandate that health insurers cover contraception in the United States began as an argument about whether Democrats could add a woman to the all-male panel.
“Where are the women?” the minority Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., asked early in the hearing.
Given that Aspirin is not a contraceptive, Friess seems to be suggesting that women keep the pill between their knees in order to ensure they legs stay closed to prevent having sex. Conspicuously, Friess doesn’t put the same burden on men.
Friess’ general attitude seems consistent with the candidate he supports. Santorum personally opposes contraception, has pledged to lecture women on the dangers of birth control if elected president, and thinks states have the right to outlaw it.
How The GOP Went Back To The 1950s In Just One Day | TPM2012
Very neatly, and on three separate fronts, conservatives in America turned the clock back to the 1950s with their rhetoric about women’s rights Thursday, according to women in politics on both sides of the aisle. This could be a big problem for the GOP when the calendar reaches November.
Let’s take a look at Thursday, February 16, 2012, the day Washington fell into a time-warp.
• On Capitol Hill, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) held hearings on contraception and religious freedom that produced the now-famous picture of a table full of men called to weigh in on access to contraceptives. Democrats wanted a woman — a Georgetown law student with a friend who lost an ovary because the university doesn’t cover birth control — to say her piece at the hearing, but Issa wouldn’t let her on the panel. He said she wasn’t “appropriate or qualified” to discuss the topic at hand.
Jaws dropped in the women’s rights community.
“She didn’t have the right credentials?” NOW President Terry O’Neill scoffed. “I’m thinking to myself, ‘Buddy, you and your little panel over there don’t have the right anatomy to talk about birth control.’”
News about women’s attire at CPAC and the shit that spewed from Friess are beyond religious freedom:
Friess’ comment was astonishing in two ways. First, it derailed the entire contraception debate that Republicans have been desperate to keep about “religious freedom” rather than make it about, well, who does or does not keep her knees together. Second, there wasn’t a woman around who didn’t have a guttural reaction.
“I want to punch that guy in the face,” said one female operative who called me on an entirely unrelated matter. Phone calls and IM conversations for the rest of the day included similar appraisals of Santorum’s biggest financial backer.
So there you have it: modern women being told by Republicans that they’re not qualified to talk about their own sexual health, are dressed like “whores” and probably need birth control because they’re so slutty. And this is just in one day.
Uh…the article forgot a couple of items… voting against the Violence Against Women Act: GOP Oppose Violence Against Women Act Because It Helps Too Many | Care2 Causes
The state sanctioned rape of women who want to use their rights to legal abortions:State-Sanctioned Rape: Trans-Vaginal Ultrasound Laws in Virginia, Texas, and Iowa | RH Reality Check
Anyone who thinks this is a religious liberty or religious freedom issue are fucking batshit crazy…delusional…sexist…discriminatory…dumbass…cruel…demeaning…dickwads…and that includes the women who go along with this shit.
This is outright war against women. Period.
I saw a tweet today that said, I vote and I sue.
Well, dammit…the GOP assholes stepped up the war on women today. We have to stop this insanity now.
peej
Carissa
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
grayslady
mablue2
NW Luna
peggysue22
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Oh, and the Dick says aspirin between knees was a joke:
Santorum Describes Friess’ Aspirin Comment As A “Bad Joke”
asshole…
from the link:
Ha ha, very funny …. not!
Update on this, Greta Van Susteren Holds Santorum’s Feet To The Fire Over Supporter’s Aspirin As Contraception Remark | Mediaite At least one woman on fox is voicing a little disgust over the aspirin remark:
Even more outrageous was that clerical panel consisting of a priest, a rabbi, a few Baptist ministers and some woman on the end who probably represents “family values”.
A panel of “delusionists” all self satisfied that whatever or whoever they worship, though unseen and without verifiable proof, must be obeyed.
Is it Allah? Jesus? God? “He who must not be named”? Xenu? Heavenly Father? Slap a name on your deity, offer it a tax exemption, throw in the devil, and voila, a religion is born!
No longer something that could be considered a personal belief, they now sit out in the open, collared and head covered, before a group of evil doers known as congress, all working in concert to enslave, chain, and further yoke women within the confines of a patriarchal system that refuses to die.
May whoever moves this planet have mercy on their souls.
Where is the AMA on this issue? How come we haven’t heard from the medical community itself regarding the harm that these laws will cause women?
It seems they can always locate doctors willing to discuss Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson’s problems, they crawl out of the woodwork to make a case.
But so far we have heard “crickets” from the one community that could make a huge difference since the AMA has much influence.
Good question and on feminist blogs discussing this latest BS — women are also asking what the AMA is saying about state ordered rapes.
Basically women are very pissed and a lot of men just don’t get it.
The war on women is never ending. THIS is want we must realize. For many of us — we fought the battles — won a few basic human rights and we thought we could take a break and go on with other matters. But NO women can never take a break. This war is also a cover for other nasty games. I don’t know what the repubs are hiding but it has to be something big.
Does anyone see that the GOP is really getting aggressive — in the old days they’d at least try to be sneaky — but this crop of warriors are just nasty and crude. Reminds me of bullies who tell their victims that no one care and no one will help the target of the bully. I think these right wing bullies who have taken over the GOP are pushing as hard as they can — to see just how far they can push.
Where is the Christian “love”? I see a bunch of bullies forcing an obscene religion on the world. (missionaries who go to Africa to help eradicate the gays for example.)
New Hampshire state Rep. Jeanine Notter (R) arguing, in all seriousness, that birth control pills can cause prostate cancer. h/t maddowblog 🙂
She is bat shit crazy — cause and effect is what she’s claiming.
I guess schools don’t teach science anymore — nor critical thinking.
Does this bat shit crazy bitch not know that the human body is a chemical factory. What does she think her stomach produces in order to digest food.
Dumb dumber and dumbest — she’s dumbest.
See, it’s all about why birth control is bad for men.
Why can’t we ship these idiots back to the Neolithic Age? Better yet, the Paleozoic and they can argue theology with the dinosaurs until getting wiped out in the P-T extinction.