Finally Friday Reads: Of Harpies, Hags, and Magical Vaginas

Posted: June 23, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , | 23 Comments

Harpy. A hybrid monster formed of a vulture with the head (and sometimes the torso) of a woman.

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

We’re all aware of the ongoing chaos created by the U.S. Supreme Court and its many unprecedented decisions. The majority of people have no confidence in them. ProPublica has shown how corrupt many are, having been bribed and brought in as pets to right-wing billionaires active in the Federal Society. We can see the blood on their hands just one year after their bizarre decision with Dobbs overturned Roe v. Wade. They’re clearly paid henchmen to rid their overlords of inconvenient people.

We’ve recently determined that many men in Congress and state legislatures creating this legislature don’t even understand women’s bodies or reproduction. Yet, here they are, inflicting us with the Middle-Age religious ideology of the Dark Ages. This article from the Guardian is 8 years old but still stands up, as evidenced by the chaos and ignorance that rules the Dobbs Decision. “Women’s bodies can’t perform magic. Someone, please tell Republicans. One congressman this week thought that if women swallow pills, they end up in their vaginas. The GOP still knows nothing about female anatomy.”  This was written by Jessica Valenti. 

Do Republican men think women are mythical creatures, like unicorns or fairies? It’s the only explanation I can come up with to make sense of the party’s continued insistence that women’s bodies can perform feats of absolute magic.

On Monday, during testimony on a state bill that would ban doctors from using telemedicine to prescribe abortion pills, Idaho Republican Rep Vito Barbieri asked a testifying physician if pregnant women could swallow small cameras so that doctors could “determine what the situation is”.

Dr Julie Madsen – who I imagine must have been suppressing the eyeroll of a lifetime – responded that it couldn’t be done because “when you swallow a pill it would not end up in the vagina.”

Barbieri now says the question was a rhetorical one (that’s the ticket!) but his gaffe reminds us all about just how little Republicans understand about women’s bodies. Though, again, I’m honored that they think we hold such awesome abilities. After all, who could forget then-Rep Todd Akin’s assertion that women who were “legitimately” raped would not get pregnant because “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Like a superpower! Or Rush Limbaugh’s belief that women’s bodies are so all-powerful that we actually require a birth control pill every time we have sex to keep from getting pregnant. But it doesn’t stop there.

Conservatives apparently also think that women are so magic as to almost be immortal – you see, they don’t believe that abortion are ever necessary to save a woman’s life or protect her health. They’re so sure of this, in fact, that they’ve been willing to bet our lives on it. It was just four years ago that House Republicans proposed to pass a bill that would have made it legal for hospitals to deny life-saving abortions to women who needed them and even deny them transfer to another hospital willing to perform the procedure. Maybe they just think we have nine lives?

Republicans must think we’re magic – how else do they think we can possibly have all these kids (since we’re not supposed to need or want or get abortions) with no paid maternity leave, no subsidized child care, no livable minimum wage and a culture that thinks we’re supposed to grin and bear it?

Shockingly, all the fairy tale tales conservatives have told themselves about women’s bodies and abilities hasn’t done the Republicans any favors around election time. And despite trainings for Republican candidates to learn how to talk about gender without saying something idiotic about rape or vaginas, Republican men continue to think stupid things about women and women continue to not vote for them.

So please, keep it up, guys. Talk more about what our vaginas can do, or how getting pregnant after rape is a “gift from god”. The more we watch as men who lack basic knowledge of biology and the human reproductive system make laws about what we can do with our own bodies, the more I believe that maybe women really are magic. We take care of our families as Republicans insist we’re “strong” enough to do with less. We battle back against archaic laws and dinosaur politicians. We do things a lot more impressive than swallowing a pill and having it migrate to our vaginas. That’s just weird.

Dracopopodis, from “Historia animalium” by Konrad Gesner, 1551/1558

So now, knowledge about women’s reproductive systems cannot be taught in Medical School or practiced even in extreme emergencies. This is from The New Republic and is written by Tori Otten. “Ob-Gyns Say More People Are Dying Since Dobbs Overturned Right to Abortion. A new KFF poll finds health professionals are incredibly concerned about the restrictions on abortion.”

Health professionals say that maternal mortality has skyrocketed in the year since Roe v. Wade was overturned, a new survey from KFF found, a sign of how harmful abortion bans are.

The Supreme Court rattled the country when it rolled back the nationwide right to abortion on June 24, 2022. In the year since then, Republican-led states have cracked down on abortion access, imposing confusing restrictions or outright bans on the procedure. Many in the GOP argue that they are not limiting access to medically necessary procedures, but instead are saving lives.

KFF surveyed nearly 600 ob-gyns nationwide from March to May, and found that 68 percent say the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision worsened their ability to respond to pregnancy-related emergencies. The survey also found that 64 percent of ob-gyns “believe that the Dobbs decision has worsened pregnancy-related mortality” and 70 percent believe the ruling increased racial and ethnic inequities in maternal health.

Three old hags surround a basket of newborn babies with bats in the distance. Etching by F. Goya, 1796/98.

What’s the response of Republican candidates for the Presidency? Well, Mike Pence takes it to infinity and beyond. This is from Politico Playbook: “Mike Pence’s plan to go further on abortion.” How farther can this go?

PENCE LEANS IN ON ABORTION POLITICS — Tomorrow marks one year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, revoking the constitutional right to abortion it established. And ever since, Republicans have been twisting themselves in knots over how to handle the fallout.

Trump avoids talking about the matter almost entirely. Florida Gov. RON DeSANTIS signed a six-week abortion ban in the middle of the night in April and has barely spoken about it since. Sen. TIM SCOTT (R-S.C.) originally waffled on whether he’d support a nationwide abortion ban. And former South Carolina Gov. NIKKI HALEY has been vague about how she’d handle the issue as president.

Then there’s MIKE PENCE.

More than any other Republican candidate, the former VP has staked his pitch to voters on his unabashed restrictionist stance.

While some Republicans — including Trump and former New Jersey Gov. CHRIS CHRISTIE — say that in a post-Roe America, abortion policy should be left up to the states, Pence has endorsed a nationwide ban on the medical procedure at 15 weeks of gestation.

While some Republicans say the party shouldn’t weigh in on banning widely used abortion drugs, Pence’s 501(c)(4) group Advancing American Freedom has filed an amicus brief supporting a challenge to the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, the most widely used abortion pill.

And this weekend, while Pence will be among a parade of 2024 hopefuls addressing evangelical conservatives at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Conference in Washington (more on that below), he is the only candidate who’ll also speak at the Students for Life rally on the National Mall, in addition to being the only candidate invited to address a nationwide Susan B. Anthony List call for activists commemorating the end of Roe.

Yesterday, we caught up with Pence to talk about the one-year anniversary of the Dobbs ruling. We wanted to know how he squares his own position with the political reality that abortion restrictions are consistently unpopular in polls and whether he’s worried that opposition will blow back on him and the GOP at the ballot box.

The upshot: not a bit. And he thinks Republican candidates need to stop running scared from the issue and embrace it head on. Listen to excerpts in Playbook Daily Briefing

HOW PENCE SEES IT: The GOP, Pence said, faces a choice, “whether or not we’re going to continue to be a party grounded in the conservative principles that have won not only the White House, but won majorities over the last 50 years again and again — or whether our party is going to shy away from those core traditional principles.”

As for him? “For me, for our campaign, we’re going to stand where we’ve always stood, and that is stand without apology for the right to life,” he said.

In our interview, Pence flatly rejected the conventional wisdom in Washington that Republicans suffered in the midterms because of Dobbs blowback. Those who lost, he said, had a “common denominator” that “has not to do with the issue of abortion.”

“Rather, where candidates were focused on the past — focused on relitigating the past — we did not fare well,” Pence said, a veiled reference to Republicans parroting the false claim that Trump won the 2020 election.

PENCE VS. THE FIELD: His unabashed stance on abortion is one way Pence differentiates himself from the rest of the GOP’s 2024 field. And he’s certainly not shy about drawing that contrast, particularly vis-a-vis Trump.

Winged Sphinx

Most Democratic strategists see this as a winning discussion, given current polling on the types of people likely to vote in the General Election. This is from NBC News. “Poll: 61% of voters disapprove of Supreme Court decision overturning Roe. On the anniversary of the Dobbs decision, 53% say abortion access nationwide has become too difficult, a new NBC News poll finds.”

On the anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling that overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, 6 in 10 voters remain opposed to the court’s removing federal protection of the right to abortion, according to results from a new national NBC News poll.

Nearly 80% of female voters ages 18-49, two-thirds of suburban women, 60% of independents and even a third of Republican voters say they disapprove.

Women have no desire to be the property of politicians, let alone the crazy ones cited in the Guardian article who can’t even figure out their reproductive systems.

And, again, let’s state that all of this is because of a group of  “corrupt and shady” SCOTUS appointees who all happen to be Republican so far. Alito, Grand Inquisitor of the Dobbs Debacle, is turning out to be corrupt, arrogant, and still thoroughly repulsive.

A harpy in Ulisse Aldrovandi’s Monstrorum Historia, Bologna, 1642.

If you haven’t read about all the free fishing trips Alito got already, Joyce Vance’s substack is an excellent place to go.

You should read the full piece in ProPublica for yourself, but it’s lengthy, so we’ll hit the high notes here tonight in case you need to save it for the weekend. Suffice it to say, this reporting dramatically increases concerns about the Court’s legitimacy. My friend and colleague Barb McQuade put it best: “Pro tip: If you’re a Supreme Court justice, don’t take free trips, even when the seat on the billionaire’s private plane would ‘otherwise go unoccupied.’ Normal people don’t get free fishing trips to Alaska. It is not your winning personality that makes you different.”

And now, for the next entry in the most corrupt SCOTUS evah! Wait that would be Clarence Thomas. He’s been at the grifting game a long time. However, even this newbie might catch up.   This is from the Salon Link below. 

This is reported by Tatyana Tandanpolie.  This is actually a twofer. Two hyper-zealots with a need for a good life and a crusader’s need for blood.

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett has personal ties to a leader of the legal clinic under the Notre Dame initiative that funded Justice Samuel Alito’s July 2022 speaking trip to Rome, CNN reports.

Just months after she was sworn in at the Supreme Court in 2020, Barrett, who had left her judgeship and job as a Notre Dame law professor, sold her private home in South Bend, Indiana, to a recently hired Notre Dame professor who was assuming a leadership role at the Religious Liberty Initiative, according to records discovered by the left-leaning non-profit watchdog group Accountable.US.

The initiative’s legal clinic has curried favor with the Supreme Court since its founding in 2020 and filed at least nine “friend-of-the-court” amicus briefs in religious liberty cases before the Court. Alito joined the majority in deciding in favor of the initiative’s conservative positions in several of those cases, including the one that reversed Roe v. Wade, and others on issues of school prayer and COVID-19 restrictions on churches.

Neither Barrett’s real estate transaction nor Alito’s trip to Italy to deliver a keynote at a gala violated the court’s ethics rules, several experts told CNN.

“It raises a question – not so much of corruption as such, but of whether disclosures, our current system of disclosures, is adequate to the task,” Kathleen Clark, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis Law School who specializes in government ethics, told the outlet.

Barrett sold the home to Brendan Wilson, then a Washington D.C.-based lawyer, for $905,000, a transaction that she was not required to disclose on her annual financial forms. Federal regulations exclude sales of the “personal residence of the filer and the filer’s spouse” from financial matters judges are mandated to disclose.

I don’t think Republicans know what “public service” is supposed to be about. They seem to believe that the public should service them, and then they become overlords of the public’s access to civil liberties. All of this is funded by billionaire nutters and actual taxpayers.

Okay, I just couldn’t resist posting this. Tech Dudes and the Maga Hags go at it big time. I guess infighting among the enemy is a good sport. Oh, to be a fly around the Supreme Court Building now. I could use a little bit of Alito v Thomas right now fighting for the belt of least guilty amongst us.

Have a great weekend!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Maudlin Monday Reads: SCOTUS takes aim at LGBTQ Rights

Posted: December 5, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , | 18 Comments

La chute de l’angle, The Falling Angel, Marc Chagall, 1947

Good Day Sky Dancers!

Today could be the day the Supreme Court lets “artists” exercise free speech by refusing public service to GLBTQ clients seeking services like cake baking. You may ask yourself, didn’t they decide this already? Why is ‘Masterpiece Cake’ returning to the Supreme Court with the same argument? The answer is basically the Court is clearly in the heads of theocratic monsters, and they’ll get the decision they want instead of the one they got last time. Then, we can wonder where it will take us. Tailors, that refuse to make pantsuits for women? Portrait artists, that refuse disabled or disfigured subjects? Photographers that don’t want to take photos of religious ceremonies that may offend them?

Well, the answer is don’t hang a shingle on a door and offer public services. You can make that list of anti-social behaviors as long as you look for jobs in spaces where you feel safe. Seems simple, right? But this revisit of established precedent will likely go down the rabbit hole of autocracy and bigotry.

Ashes, Edvard Munch, 1894-1895

I don’t play piano at weddings, and I don’t go near churches anymore. It creeps me out and brings out a lot of bad memories. But then, I don’t have a shingle on my front door or place an ad on the internet offering my services for hire to the public. I basically go look for the gigs I want. My last big one on Bourbon Street was as the pianist and music director of a Drag Cabaret show. I suppose if I did this now, my life and the life of my compatriots would be in danger, and that’s a problem. I’ve had to protect the same folks as they read stories to children in the small library around the corner.

This is what the law has said for a long time. You can not offer separate accommodations or refuse to serve some part of the public because of your fee-fees, no matter what they’re based in. However, the christofascists on the court believe they have a right to dictate their religious bigotry and intolerance to us all because it’s all about them. It’s not about the Constitution. It’s not about precedent. It’s about them and what they want to do and not do. That’s a whole lot of toddler behavior right there. And it still boils down to privacy. The one established precedent that’s seriously endangered. They did it to women with the Roe decision, and now we’re going down the dark path again. They went to keep it all about them and their pet fetishes and identities.

This is an Op-Ed in today’s New York Times by ACLU National Legal Director David Cole. “The Supreme Court Is About to Ask the Wrong Question About the First Amendment.”

Can an artist be compelled to create a website for an event she does not condone? That’s the question the Supreme Court has said it will take up on Monday, when it hears oral arguments in 303 Creative v. Elenis. The answer would seem to be obviously “no.”

But that’s the wrong question. The right question is whether someone who chooses to open a business to the public should have the right to turn away gay customers simply because the service she would provide them is “expressive” or “artistic.” Should an architecture firm that believes Black families don’t deserve fancy homes be permitted to turn away Black clients because its work is “expressive”? Can a florist shop whose owner objects to Christianity refuse to serve Christians? The answer to these questions would seem to be, just as obviously, “no.”

So why is the first question the wrong one in this dispute? The case before the court was brought by 303 Creative, a business that says it wants to offer wedding website design services to the public, but doesn’t want to serve gay couples. Under Colorado’s “public accommodations law,” businesses that choose to serve the public at large cannot turn people away because of their race, sex, religion, sexual orientation or other protected characteristics. 303 Creative claims that because its service is expressive and its owner objects to same-sex marriage, it can’t be required to obey Colorado’s law. Not to afford it an exemption, the company argues, compels it to speak against its will and violates its free speech rights.

If this sounds familiar, that’s because five years ago the Supreme Court considered a similar case, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, in which a bakery asserted a free-expression right to turn away a gay couple that asked it to make a cake to celebrate their wedding. The court resolved that dispute on other grounds, so did not answer the question. Masterpiece Cakeshop’s lawyers are back before the court, making the same argument with a new client. (303 Creative has actually never made a wedding website for anyone, but it claims that it can’t even get started without a legal ruling that it can turn away gay couples.)

The Fallen Angel (L’Ange déchu) French artist Alexandre Cabanel,1847

I think that the last sentence is important. They’ve never actually offered their service. They are headed to the Supreme Court before proving their ability to provide the service to anyone. Why not go after couples in their local worship facility or similar churches if that’s how they feel? Why run to the Supreme Court?

Two features of the law make clear that Colorado’s law does not coerce artists to express a message with which they disagree.

First, no artist has to open a business to the public in the first place. Most writers, painters and other artists never do; they pick their subjects and leave it at that. The photographer Annie Leibovitz, for example, does not offer to take photographs of anyone who offers to pay her fee, but chooses her subjects. She is perfectly free to photograph only white people or only Buddhists.

But if Ms. Leibovitz were to open a portrait photography business that offered to take portraits on a first-come, first-served basis to the public at large, as many corporate photography studios do, she could not turn away subjects just because they were Black or Christian. Her photographic work would be just as expressive. But the choice to benefit from the public marketplace comes with the legal obligation to equally serve members of the public. And requiring businesses that offer expressive services in the public marketplace to follow the same rules as all other businesses does not violate the First Amendment.

Second, even businesses open to the public are free to define the content of what they sell. A Christmas store can sell only Christmas items without running afoul of public accommodations laws. It need not stock Hanukkah candles or Kwanzaa cards. But it cannot put a sign on its doors saying, “We don’t serve Jews” or “No Blacks allowed.”

303 Creative argues that it is not turning away same-sex couples because they are gay, but because it objects to the message that making a wedding website for them would convey. The company has, however, asked the court to declare its right to refuse to make any website for a same-sex couple’s wedding, even if its content is identical to one it would design for a straight couple. According to this line of argument, the company could refuse a gay couple even a site that merely announced the time and location of the wedding and recommended places to stay.

Richard Pousette-Dart, Yellow Amorphous, 1950

Will the Supreme Court sanctify the reinstatement of Jim Crow Laws?

Meanwhile, there is clear and present danger from those targeting GLBT communities. We’ve seen this in recent mass shootings at GLBTQ gathering places. This attack on a power grid in North Caroline Saturday night is almost beyond belief. Who would shoot out several power stations just to shut down a Drag Queen Story Time event? Why leave an entire county without power? The FBI, among other criminal investigation agencies, is on it. This is from NBC news. “‘Targeted’ N.C. power outages could leave thousands in the dark for days. A curfew was declared and schools were closed as the FBI and state authorities joined the investigation into the gun attacks on two energy substations in Moore County.”

In a statement, the FBI’s Charlotte, N.C., field office confirmed its involvement in the investigation and called the attacks on the substations “willful damage.”

The sheriff said the motive in the case was still unknown. Asked if there was any connection to a 7 p.m. LGBTQ+ drag show in the city of Southern Pines on Saturday, Fields said, “It is possible, yes.”

“Anything is possible,” he said. “But we haven’t been able to tie anything back to the drag show.”

The headliner and host at the Sunrise Theater event, Naomi Dix, said in an interview that the show went on in candlelight Saturday after power ceased at about 8:15 p.m.

She said she was unaware the outage might have had anything to do with the event until hearing news Saturday night that mentioned unconfirmed reports the outages may have been the result of an attempt to put the drag show in the dark.

“The show got a lot of heat from right-wing conservatives who did not want us there,” Dix said.

The Fayetteville Observer reported Friday that the event, titled “Downtown Divas,” was the subject of threats, criticism and unfounded allegations about the LGBTQ+ community and certain types of crime.

“This is nothing new to our community,” Dix said.

Organizers and the venue carried on with planning but changed the age limit from all ages to 18 and older to keep children away from any possible protests, the publication said.

This wasn’t the only attack for the weekend. The usual Right Wing Militias showed up with guns and cosplay costumes in Ohio to intimidate the performers and their audience.

Earlier Saturday, hosts of a “Drag Queen Story Hour”-style event for children in Columbus, Ohio, pulled the plug because of what they described as the intimidating presence of right-wing demonstrators, some of whom carried long guns.

The Soul of the City
MARC CHAGALL, 1945

So, hate crimes from these groups are on the rise. The increase in the first half of 2022 is startling. This is from VOA. “U.S. Hate Crimes Rise During First Half of 2022”. I researched this a lot yesterday and found the FBI statistics interesting. Yes, they follow hate crimes based on sex/gender too. There is a sad number of stats on people being violated for simply being a religion, an ethnic group, or a race, etc. It’s a sad and growing list.

Hate crimes in major U.S. cities rose moderately during the first half of 2022 after posting double-digit percentage increases over the past two years, according to police data compiled by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.

The data collected from 15 major city police departments show an average increase of about 5 percent in bias-motivated incidents so far this year, according to a new report by the extremism research center at California State University at San Bernardino. The 15 cities have a combined population of 25.5 million people.

By comparison, a larger sample of data from 52 major cities compiled by the center showed hate crimes in the United States surged by nearly 30 percent in 2021, according to the report.

A hate crime is defined by the FBI as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.”

U.S. hate crimes have been on the rise in recent years, driven by factors ranging from a surge in anti-Asian sentiments during the COVID-19 pandemic to anti-Black animus in reaction to racial justice protests that broke out across America in 2020 after the killing of African American George Floyd while in police custody.

If the increases seen so far this year hold, it would mark the fourth consecutive year in which hate crimes have risen in the United States.

I’m pretty sure that the trend of the last four years has some correlation with the rise of Trump. You may find the 2020 hate crimes statistics reported by the DOJ here. 

In August 2021, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released Hate Crime Statistics 2020, an annual compilation of bias-motivated incidents in the United States. Though the number of reporting agencies decreased by 452 since 2019, the overall number of reported incidents increased by 949, contributing to a total of 8,263 hate crime incidents against 11,126 victims in 2020. While annual law enforcement agency participation may fluctuate, the statistics indicate that hate crimes remain a concern for communities across the country.

According to this year’s data, 62% of victims were targeted because of the offenders’ bias toward race/ethnicity/ancestry, which continues to be the largest bias motivation category. Participating agencies reported 5,227 race/ethnicity/ancestry-based incidents in 2020, a 32% increase from 2019. Anti-Black or African American hate crimes continue to be the largest bias incident victim category, with 2,871 incidents in 2020, a 49% increase since 2019. Additionally, there were 279 anti-Asian incidents reported in 2020, a 77% increase since 2019. The other largest categories of hate crimes include anti-Hispanic or Latino incidents, with 517, and anti-White incidents, with 869 in total.

And, I’d just like to add the news from New Orleans that Thanksgiving included a trip to the Jefferson Parish Prison and Courts for a niece of Chris Christie.

One thing I truly believe is that if we allow any public transgression that’s an action against a disenfranchised sector of humanity be it women, people of color, or the LGBTQ or a religious community, it should be considered a transgression against all of us. There is a first amendment right to free speech. The right-wing and the theocrats among us do not understand what that means. We recently learned that Supreme Court justices can hold allegiance to their philosophical and religious views and get that First Amendment terrifically wrong. The big difference is they do it on purpose, and it empowers others.

Let me leave with this article about Steve Scalise and his newly anointed majority leader position in the house. The headline jumped at me. “Stephanie Grace: Let’s hope Steve Scalise brings his better angels to the majority leader’s office.”  This means it’s not all about him and what his clique wants to see in public and prevent in private. Remember, this is the man who went on T.V. saying Pelosi did nothing to bring the Guard in to deal with the Jan 6 insurrection, and then the film later showed him standing right there beside her as she did that. We cannot trust him or blindly hope he’ll be different. That’s what the press told us about Trump and many of his droogies.

During his time in the House, his less combative side has shown itself on occasion. Back in 2014, he worked with Maxine Waters, another California Democrat whom Republicans love to hate, to keep federal flood insurance more affordable for homeowners. In 2020, he criticized the toxic politics of Marjorie Taylor Greene and supported a Republican primary opponent, to no avail.

Chalk at least some of this up to Scalise’s formational years in the Louisiana Legislature, where coalitions surrounding individual issues are historically more fluid than they are in Washington and where bipartisan legislation is common (although disturbingly, becoming less so in recent years).

Certainly Scalise understands his role as a party leader in the current environment and embraces it. But he has retained the invaluable, and unfortunately rare, ability to not make things personal, to not treat political disputes as showdowns with mortal enemies.

That in no way excuses the many times Scalise has leaned into the era’s ugliness instead of away from it.

He absolutely encouraged the baseless conspiracy that the 2020 election was stolen, and amazingly questioned Pelosi’s actions leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, even as he scrupulously avoided pinning any responsibility for stoking the violent insurrection on Trump. He has also voted against — and in his current role as Republican whip, lined up votes in opposition to — legislation to meet some of Louisiana’s vast infrastructure needs.

Satan Smiting Job with Sore Boils, William Blake, c. 1826

I no longer believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt. Certainly, not in this environment. We’re fortunate to keep the Senate, but the Supreme Court will be a hot mess for a long time. I do not expect the next two years of the Republican-led House and its committees to be a cakewalk or even a walk on a stormy day. It will be more like a trek through hell. I also believe that we’ve gone too far down that path to hell to not be vigilant about the rise of hate crimes and the plans that the christofascists have for keeping the rest of us scared and in line. Their plot to keep women barefoot and in the kitchen seems well ahead of schedule. Their focus now is driving their agendas through their packed courts.

We need to stick together. I’ve used a lot of artists’ expressions of hell and fallen angels here. The metaphors and stories of various religious traditions are much more interesting when viewed as precautionary tales instead of ways to act out your zealotry. Let’s hope Scalise and a few others find their better angels.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Friday Reads

Posted: March 30, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: , , , , , | 64 Comments

Good Morning!

I have a few odds and ends to share with you this morning.  The first comes from Slate: How to kill an abortion bill
Step one: Wait for a politician to say something stupid. Repeat.

Activists in other states that have successfully beat back anti-reproductive rights laws have noticed a similar pattern: A legislator says something terrible and condescending; women use social media to stoke nationwide outrage about the comment; and the legislators, cowed by the unexpected attention, back down.

Yup.  It’s got all your favorite hits including the asshole that compared women giving birth to livestock.  There’s a few more too.

But antiabortion legislators are actually on the defensive against angry constituents for a change, which means they have to explain themselves. And that means they’re often getting themselves into trouble for being a little too honest about their misogyny, like the Alaska Republican state representative who said, “I thought that a man’s signature was required in order for a woman to have an abortion,” only then to see mockery of an “abortion permission slip” ricochet around the Internet. Or the Wisconsin senator who just said that all women who can’t afford contraception need to do is Google it.

“Every time a politician says something terrible, people respond emotionally to that,” says Luther. “It makes people in Florida care about what’s happening in Idaho.” It was harder, she adds, to get people fired up about Utah’s mandatory waiting period, maybe because there was no single tweetable moment.

A 27 year-old homeless woman who was arrested for trespassing at–of all things–a hospital later died in jail.  If this isn’t a parable for our time, I don’t know what is. This is from Raw Story.

A woman who was suspect of abusing drugs and arrested for refusing to leave a hospital died of a blood clot shortly after being put in jail, according to St. Louis Today.

Anna Brown, a 29-year-old homeless African American woman, had gone to St. Mary’s Health Center in Richmond Heights, Missouri complaining of leg pain after spraining her ankle. Doctors performed an x-ray of her knees and an ultrasound, but detected no blood clots. She was given pain medication and discharged.

About eight hours later she returned to the hospital by ambulance complaining of abdominal pain. The hospital told her she had already been treated and discharged her again, but Brown refused to leave. When police officers arrived on another call, the hospital told them that Brown was claiming she “did not receive adequate medical attention and did not have to leave.”

The officers said they waited about three hours before a doctor told them Brown was healthy enough to be arrested.

Brown told the officers she could not stand, so they carried her by her arms and legs. Police suspected Brown was on drugs and left her laying [sic] in her cell on the ground.

About fifteen minutes later, a jail worker found her dead. An autopsy did not find any drugs in her system.

Yup. Nothing like being young, homeless and a woman that spells drug abuse and not to be taken seriously.  Alternet has another cautionary tale that’s a bit more metaphorical.  It’s about the Horrors of an Ayn Rand World.

In an Objectivist world, the reset button would be pushed on government services that we take for granted. They would not be cut back, not reduced — they would vanish. In an Objectivist world, roads would go unplowed in the snows of winter, and bridges would fall as the government withdrew from the business of maintaining them — unless some private citizen would find it in his rational self-interest to voluntarily take up the slack by scraping off the rust and replacing frayed cables. Public parks and land, from the tiniest vest-pocket patch of green to vast expanses of the West, would be sold off to the newly liberated megacorporations. Airplane traffic would be grounded unless a profit-making capitalist found it in his own selfish interests to fund the air traffic control system. If it could be made profitable, fine. If not, tough luck. The market had spoken. The Coast Guard would stay in port while storm- tossed mariners drown lustily as they did in days of yore. Fires would rage in the remnants of silent forests, vegetation and wildlife no longer protected by rangers and coercive environmental laws, swept clean of timber, their streams polluted in a rational, self-interested manner by bold, imaginative entrepreneurs.

Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan publicly worship Ayn Rand.  So did Allan Greenspan and of course, the Pauls.  Here’s a little something on that from the Harvard Political Review.  Check out Down with Tryanny to see how icky Cantor looked in high school with his quote “I want it when I want it.

I really hope you don’t have a student loan with Sallie Mae.  This article basically reaffirms my experience with the loan shark company.  Also, rates are low for all the banksters but they want higher rates for students. This is from ProPublica.

Bloomberg reported this week that some federally contracted debt collection agencies have been playing hardball with borrowers who are behind, insisting on payments the borrowers can’t afford — even when federal student-loan rules allow more leniency.

The debt collectors have an incentive to be tough.  As Bloomberg explains:

Under Education Department contracts, collection companies “rehabilitate” a defaulted loan by getting a borrower to make nine payments in 10 months. If they succeed, they reap a jackpot: a commission equal to as much as 16 percent of the entire loan amount, or $3,200 on a $20,000 loan.

These companies receive that fee only if borrowers make a minimum payment of 0.75 percent to 1.25 percent of the loan each month, depending on its size. For example, a $20,000 loan would require payments of about $200 a month. If the payment falls below that figure, the collector receives an administrative fee of $150.

The Department of Education is trying to balance its interest in helping struggling borrowers and stewarding taxpayer dollars, department spokesman Justin Hamilton told Bloomberg.

Striking that balance, it seems, hasn’t been easy. Consumer advocates chafed when President Obama, as part of a deficit-reduction plan promoted last fall, recommended allowing debt collectors to robo-call the cell phones of borrowers who fell behind on federal student loans and other debts to the government.

I’m trying to get mine consolidated over to the Department of Education.

One last story that just won’t go away. The Guardian reports that Apple factories in China are still unhealthy and ignoring labor laws.  Enjoy those Ipads and Ipods!

An audit of Apple’s Chinese factories details “serious and pressing” concerns over excessive working hours, unpaid overtime, health and safety failings, and management interference in trade unions.

In the most detailed public investigation yet into conditions at Foxconn factories in China, which assemble millions of iPhones and iPads each year, the independent Fair Labor Association found that more than half of employees had worked 11 days or more without rest.

More than 43% of workers reported experiencing or witnessing an accident at the three plants audited. Foxconn is China’s largest private-sector employer, and its activities have turned the coastal town of Shenzhen into the electronics workshop of the world.

Health and safety breaches found by auditors and published on Thursday included blocked exits, lack of or faulty personal protective equipment and missing permits, which the FLA said was remedied when discovered.

Despite several suicides, which raised the alarm two years ago, and an explosion that killed three workers last year, Foxconn still failed to consult workers on safety, with the committees “failing to monitor conditions in a robust manner”, the report found.

So, that’s what I’ve got for you this morning.  What’s on your reading and blogging list today?