WHAT.
The Trump administration is prohibiting officials at the nation’s top public health agency from using a list of seven words or phrases — including “fetus” and “transgender” — in official documents being prepared for next year’s budget.
All you misogynist motherfuckers can now live out your shitty convictions with your very own bodies!
[D]octors at Baylor University say a woman born without a uterus has delivered a baby after a successful transplant, the first time the surgery has worked outside of the Swedish hospital that pioneered the procedure.
That’s right: no uterus? No problem! Anti-choice d00ds, now you can save the preshuss baybeez in your own implanted uterus!
“Identity politics!” is not just a weaponized shibboleth conservatives deploy against lefties; the very mainest of mainstream media tosses around the phrase without a trace of critical analysis, never mind introspection. The standard blather usually goes something like: “Democrats made a strategic decision to play identity politics while Republicans focused their party’s campaign on [family values/bootstraps/abortions/tax cuts/whatever shit they happen to be slinging that day].”
But what has long been obvious to me, despite the Democrats’ typical weak-sauce response to the terrible accusation of “playing identity politics” is this: white cis het male is a fucking identity. IT’S TRUE! (I know, right?!) And of course it is the one identity whose supreme position in the socio-political hierarchy it is that conservatives wish to conserve, at all costs, and at the expense of literally everyone else.
Women. People of color. LGBTQ people. Muslims. Immigrants.
Why Democratic leaders (and “journalists”) do not point out this simple, irrefutable fact at every conceivable opportunity is perhaps a topic for another day. (Believe me I have my theories, not least of which is the problem that so many in Democratic leadership positions are themselves white cis het males, as are the money men of Wall Street they serve and upon whom they rely for campaign funds.) But today, I want to highlight a Democrat who calls out this identity politics bullshit brilliantly: Danica Roem.
What’s so awesome about Danica Roem? LET ME COUNT THE WAYS.
I’m pretty sure by now everyone and their mother has heard the shocking (hahaha soooo not shocking) allegations about Alabama Asshat Roy Moore’s sexual misconduct with a 14 year old girl, back when he was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney. But just in case you need a little background refresher about the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate:
Moore has been removed twice as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court for refusing to follow federal court orders related to the separation of church and state. He argues unabashedly that his personal interpretation of the Bible trumps the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Constitution. In 2003, he disregarded a court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state judicial building. In 2016, he was suspended after trying to block the implementation of the SCOTUS ruling that legalized same-sex marriage.
The d00d makes your typical bible-thumpin’ theocrat seem like PZ Myers by comparison. [Read more…]
This NRA stands for National Restaurant Association, which sounds fairly innocuous, at least compared to the gun fetishist lobby we’ve all come to know and despise.
HAHAHA NOPE.
[CONTENT NOTE: rape, domestic violence, inhumane treatment of vulnerable people.]
I AM SIDE-EYING THE FUCK OUT OF YOU AUSTRALIA. And yeah, I know that is reeeeeeeeally saying something coming from a citizen of the United States of Avarice, where we will happily privatize for profit everything that isn’t nailed down, and also everything that is nailed down too. Hell, I hesitated even posting about this story, lest I give Paul Ryan et al or conservative Democrats the Squirrel People any more exquisitely horrible ideas. So please, people: I implore you to keep this information to yourselves during your usual daily barrage of irate calls to your congresscritters.
via UltraViolet:
Trump just announced he will take away free birth control from up to 55 million women, claiming it promotes “risky sexual behavior.”
How ’bout you worry about controlling your own sexual behavior, and I worry about mine.
Asshole.
Women use birth control for everything from calming menstrual cramps to family planning to managing crippling pain from endometriosis. In fact, sex becomes a lot riskier without access to birth control.
Gosh, ya think?
This is just the latest attempt by the Trump administration to pander to right wing extremists who want to sabotage women
‘s health care.
FIFY. You’re welcome.
The good news is that we can still save free birth control for millions of women who need it. Insurance companies benefit from covering the co-pay–in part because birth control is vastly cheaper than childbirth or endometriosis treatment. Let’s make sure that every single health insurance company, starting with three of the biggest–UnitedHealthcare, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Kaiser–hears from us right away.
__________
Under a capitalist healthcare system, rights and access are dependent on a profit motive. Not on what is moral and good and the right thing to do. Not on laws or constitutions. Certainly not on the best health care practices. So we must desperately appeal to the bottom line of a parasitic, profit-driven industry, one whose notorious and egregious abuses are legion, and which in any sane and just society would not even fucking exist.
But here we are. Please sign and signal boost the petition if you are willing and able.
THANK YOU.
Well lookee here.
Rep. Tim Murphy resigns from Congress after allegedly asking woman to have abortion
Rep. Tim Murphy told House leaders on Thursday that he will resign from Congress this month, a day after the eight-term Pennsylvania Republican announced that he would not seek another term amid a personal scandal.
Personal scandal? Oh do tell…
The resignation of Murphy, a clinical psychologist, comes after a news report claimed that the married Republican had asked a woman with whom he had an extramarital affair to get an abortion.
…
Murphy is a member of the House Pro-Life Caucus and was a co-sponsor of a Republican bill approved Tuesday that bans most abortions after 20 weeks of fetal development.
Also: FUCK YOU CONSERVATIVES.
Since there are currently no pressing problems facing our great nation, the US House of Reprehensibles has just passed HB 36, a national ban on abortions after 20-weeks. Charmingly entitled “The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,” the legislation would force a pregnant patient who is carrying a fetus that is dead, dying, or incompatible with life to carry it to term and give birth, unless the patient is in grave danger of death or “substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.”
According to reality, fetuses are not capable of feeling pain until at least 28 weeks. But since conservatives are highly allergic to reality, perhaps Your Liberal Media™ might helpfully report on this egregious tripe from another angle. Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that a fetus is indeed capable of feeling pain at 20 weeks.
SO FUCKING WHAT?
You know what’s really painful? Giving birth. (So I’ve heard – I personally dodged that bullet thank Vishnu.) I would like my legislator to promptly propose a bill entitled The Pain-Capable Pregnant Person Protection Act, which provides free abortions on demand to anyone who wishes to avoid the pain of childbirth. The bill should have no problem passing in this congress, seeing how the majority is so concerned about sparing citizens from painful medical procedures.
It’ll probably do fuck all because cowards gonna cow, but please sign and share this petition if you are willing and able (via CREDO* Action):
Emergency petition: Thoughts and prayers are not enough. We need gun control now.
Tell Republicans in Congress:
“It is time to put your constituents before the National Rifle Association. Reject currently pending legislation that would gut regulations on gun silencers and armor piercing bullets, block the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, and take immediate action to ban weapons of war, including assault weapons and large capacity magazines, which have no place in the hands of private citizens.”