Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an abortion ban.
Let me say that again.
Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a ban on abortion.
Republican Trent "Incidence of Rape Resulting in Pregnancy Are Very Low" Franks (AZ) authored The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.
This bill (HR1797) "bans abortions after 20 weeks, based on the medically disputed theory that fetuses can feel pain at that point. It contains exceptions for women whose lives are in danger as well as some rape and incest victims who can prove that they reported their assaults to criminal authorities, but it contains no exceptions for severe fetal anomalies or situations in which the woman's health is threatened by her pregnancy."
The vote was 228 for the abortion ban to 196 against it. The bill had 181 Republican co-sponsors, including Maryland's Rep. Andy Harris.
222 Republicans voted for this bill. 6 voted against.
6 Democrats voted for this bill. 190 voted against.
Does it matter that this bill is unconstitutional? No. Similar bans, lead by Republicans, have or will soon become law in states like Wisconsin, Ohio, and Texas.
And unless these laws are legally challenged, they go into effect. And right now, no one is comfortable challenging them given the likelihood of a Supreme Court anxious to overturn Roe V. Wade if provided with the opportunity.
Fortunately, the House Bill won't make it to law - THIS TIME. A Democratic controlled Senate and a Democratic President who has already promised to veto the bill should be enough to enure that this Republican abortion ban won't make it to law. Again - THIS TIME.
If you don't want there to be a next time, then all you have to do is just not vote for a Republican ever again. It really seems so simple.
"My father had a ranch; we used to have 50-60 wetbacks to pick tomatoes. It takes two people to pick the same tomatoes now. It’s all done by machine.”
Yes, he used the term "wetbacks" to describe Mexican immigrant labor.
Young later fell short of apologizing, claiming that he meant, "No disrepsect."
As in, "Hey, Rep. Young, you're a racist dinosaur who has no place in American politics. No disrespect."
Young finally apologized on his second try a day later, saying:
“I apologize for the insensitive term I used during an interview in
Ketchikan, Alaska. There was no malice in my heart or intent to offend;
it was a poor choice of words.”
Johns Hopkins Neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson has recently and rapidly become a conservative folk hero.
This week he went on FOX News and compared homosexuality to bestiality and pedophilia.
He said to Sean Hannity: “Marriage is between a man and a woman. It's a well-established, fundamental pillar of society. No group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality, it doesn't matter what they are, they don't get to change the definition. So it's not agianst gays, its against anyone who comes along and wants to change the fundamental pillars of society. It has significant ramifications."
Yes, yes. Groups must never change supposed "pillars of society," If that were true, we'd still have slavery, blacks couldn't marry, people of different races couldn't marry, there'd be no civil rights, women couldn't vote, we'd still have child labor ...
Look, if you're going to go on tv, could you not embarrass all of Baltimore (and Johns Hopkins) by saying stupid shit?
(members of Towson University's White Student Union, Scott Terry (l) and Matthew Heimbach (r))
I am a huge fan of the big conservative meet-up CPAC, or as I like to think of it, "The Right Wing Freak Show."
It took place last week at National Harbor, MD as a laundry list of big names in the Republican Party convened to address and toss red meat to their right wing base (interestingly, I'd always thought of CPAC as extreme right wing, but I've read more than a few reports this year that describe the conference as center-right - it's pretty unnerving to think the baseline may have shifted so far right that CPAC is no longer considered far right).
But it was at a CPAC panel called "Trump the Race Card: Are You Sick and Tired of Being Called a Racist and You Know You're Not One?" where Towson University students were able to peel away the false mask of racial tolerance and reveal the Republican and Tea Party's true feelings about minorities.
Incidentally, if you feel the need to have a panel called "Trump the Race Card: Are You Sick and Tired of Being Called a Racist and You Know You're Not One?", you might be a racist.
If you're sick of being called a racist, stop saying and doing racist things, and stop supporting racist policies.
But as the quotes below reveal, despite a mainstream media narrative that inexplicably and incorrectly seems to assert that the Republican Party recognizes it has to change (it doesn't, it just feels like it needs to better state its message - aka apply a new coat of paint to the same rotten policies) there is a new breed of Republicans who are looking to embrace racism and seem to think they are being unfairly victimized for it.
During the panel, Scott Terry (according to Think Progress, a member of Towson University's White Student Union) suggested that slaves should have been grateful to their masters for feeding and housing them.
He then called for party segregation by offering that the races within the Republican Party should be "united like the hand, but separate like the fingers."
Terry later got right to the point by asking, “Why can’t we just have segregation?”
He also said he'd be comfortable with a society where African-Americans were permanently subservient to whites and said that all Tea Partiers shared the same racial concerns.
But lest we think his backwards attitudes were directed just at non-whites, when he was challenged by a woman at the panel, he said "I didn’t know the legacy of the Republican Party included women correcting men in public."
Matthew Heimbach, the Imperial Wiz... er, head of Towson's White Student Union, also attended the panel. In an interview with the Baltimore Sun, he bemoaned: “Diversity is not a strength,” and “We’re being displaced from our own country.”
The Sun also reported that, according the group's website, "Members ... recently attended a Latin Mass before heading to a gun range for 'tactical firearms training,' and plan to start campus patrols at Towson University."
So there's that: The new face of the next generation of Republicans - armed segregationists patrolling our college campuses.
Expect these students to have a long career in Republican politics.
Yes, yes, rape is a horrible crime. Sure it ruins lives, but not always the lives most rational, empathic human beings would assume. No, it doesn't just wreck the lives of the victims, but it also destroys the lives of the rapists. Those poor, poor rapists.
At least, that's how CNN chose to frame their coverage of the judgment of the Steubenville rapists when the judge pronounced the guilty verdict and sentencing,
Jocks Trent Mays (17) and Ma’lik Richmond (16) were found guilty of raping a 16-year-old while she was unconscious. Poor Richmond could be released from a juvenile rehabilitation facility by the time he turns 21 and Mays could be incarcerated until the ripe old age of 24.
Anchor Candy Crowley set the sympathetic tone by telling location reporter Poppy Harlow she couldn't imagine how emotional the sentencing of the rapists must have been.
Harlow concurred, saying "It had been incredibly difficult" to look on “as these two young men — who had such promising futures, star football players, very good students — literally watched as they believed their life fell apart. One of the young men, Ma’lik Richmond, as that sentence came down, he collapsed,” the CNN reporter recalled, adding that the convicted rapist told his attorney that 'my life is over, no one is going to want me now.' ... I was sitting about three feet from Ma’lik when he gave that statement. It was very difficult to watch."
I'm assuming Harlow found the sentencing of the rapists more difficult to watch than the actual rape itself, which was recorded and spread throughout the internet by these poor, poor weeping boys.
Crowley, evidently really hung up on CNN's "Sympathy for the Rapists" narrative then turned to CNN legal contributor Paul Callan, and pointed out that “a 16 year old, sobbing in court, regardless of what big football players they are, they still sound like 16 year olds.” Not entitled, crybaby rapist jocks, but crying boys.
Crowley asked, “What’s the lasting effect though on two young men being found guilty juvenile court of rape essentially?”
Callan continued with the rapist sympathy framing, adding “There’s always that moment of just — lives are destroyed. But in terms of what happens now, the most severe thing with these young men is being labeled as registered sex offenders. That label is now placed on them by Ohio law. That will haunt them for the rest of their lives.”
Know what else haunts people for the rest of their lives? BEING FUCKING RAPED!
Jocks Trent Mays (17) and Ma’lik Richmond (16) were found guilty of raping a 16-year-old girl while she was unconscious. Poor Richmond could be released from a juvenile rehabilitation facility by the time he turns 21 and Mays could be incarcerated until the ripe old age of 24.Jocks Trent Mays (17) and Ma’lik Richmond (16) were found guilty of raping a 16-year-old girl while she was unconscious. Poor Richmond could be released from a juvenile rehabilitation facility by the time he turns 21 and Mays could be incarcerated until the ripe old age of 24.
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a case on the 1965 Voting Rights Act that, by all indications, the conservatives on the bench are poised to strike down despite a unanimous vote in the Senate in 2006 to renew the Act.
During the proceedings, Justice Antonin Scalia said: And this last enactment, not a single vote in the Senate against it. And the House is pretty much the same. Now, I don’t think that’s attributable to the fact that it is so much clearer now that we need this. I think it is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement. It’s been written about. Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes.
In true conservative form, not only does Scalia think the Voting Rights Act turns the act of voting into a "racial entitlement", but the fact that there is overwhelming bi-partisan for it in congress does not actually illustrate its necessity, it somehow proves the Act is no longer necessary.
Antonin Scalia is a terrible Supreme Court Justice.
Increasingly, as a result of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision (which, aside from equating money to speech, found it legal for employers to compel their employees to participate in political campaigns even if the employee does not personally believe/support that candidate), corporations are increasingly telling their employees how to vote.
And not only are they telling employees how to vote, some CEOs are making the suggestion that if the "wrong" candidate gets elected, there may be repercussions to their career.
Essentially, CEOs are threatening employees in order to get them to put their short term economic interests of those who do not have their economic interests at heart over their own long-term economic interest.
Recently, in a conference call to the conservative National Federation of Independent Businesses, Mitt Romney encouraged this, by saying:
"I hope you make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections. And whether you agree with me or you agree with President Obama, or whatever your political view, I hope, I hope you pass those along to your employees. ... Nothing illegal about you talking to your employees about what you believe is best for the business, because I think that will figure into their election decision, their voting decision, and of course doing that with your family and your kids as well. I particularly think our young kids ... they need to understand that American runs on a strong and vibrant business and we need businesses growing and thriving this country."
And Romney's right. It's legal.
Westgate Resorts CEO David Siegel warned employees that a re-elected Obama would threaten their job security.
Arthur Allen, CEO of ASG Software Solutions, emailed his employees telling them there would be economic fallout should Obama be reelected.
Bob Murray, CEO of Murray Energy expects his employees to give money to his own PAC, and if you don't someone will call you and ask why not.
The problem with this, of course, it that you have an authority figure telling those they have authority over to not only vote a certain way, but implying there will be economic consequences of voting the wrong way.
Since Republicans seem to be okay with this type of voter coercion, I wonder, would they also be okay with, say, college professors telling their students how to vote and suggesting their grades may depend on the right candidate being elected?
My Republican friends don't like it when I point out to them that they live in an alternate reality.
They get angry when I suggest that their media - largely propaganda organs - disservice them by telling them what they want to hear instead of what's really going on.
They get even angrier when I suggest that since they embrace policies and ideas based on fictions from this alternate reality, that it makes them dangerous to the rest of us who live in the real world.
For example...
In conservative world Barack Obama isn't really the President of the United States because he's a secret Kenyan Muslim "Manchurian Candidate" without a birth certificate.
Obama was born in Hawaii.
In conservative world job numbers aren't improving, it's a conspiracy by the Obama Administration.
All non-partisan reports agree that, at least right now, job numbers are improving.
In conservative world, it was really George W. Bush who got Bin Laden.
George W. Bush said, while president, he doesn't spend much time worrying about Bin Laden. It was the Obama Administration who oversaw the killing of Bin Laden.
In conservative world, it's Barack Obama who tanked the economy.
Barack Obama inherited an economy ravaged by years of Republican economic policies.
In conservative world, what'll fix America is going back to Republican economic policies, with stricter adherence to ideological purity.
These policies have proven, time and time and time again, to fail the American people.
In conservative world, Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11.
He didn't.
In conservative world, Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
He didn't.
In conservative world, President Obama didn't call the attacks in Benghazi "terrorist attacks."
He did.
And, of course, in this past week's debate, Mitt Romney didn't do a face plant when he wrongly said Obama didn't call Benghazi a terrorist attack. It was the moderator who interfered.
No, Romney face planted because he is a product of bad conservative media. He was a casualty of Republican propaganda.
Get the picture?
On top of this, Romney and Ryan are also well-documented liars.
Republicans adhere to belief of convenience (and look for their media to reinforce that belief) because if they accepted the reality the rest of us subscribe to, well, they'd have to get introspective. And Republicans don't like to get introspective. They don't like self-criticism. They like to lash out.
I also have friends who seemingly love the supposed fact checking site, "Politi-fact." They don't enjoy it when I point out how many "facts" a site with "fact" in its title it gets wrong.
On this week's Rachel Maddow Show, Maddow masterfully tied both of these issues together, and then soundly took them apart.
"No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation."
In the right wing world, President Obama never said that.
...
So when Mitt Romney wrote an op-ed entitled "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" and he went on CBS news to defend it, they [Politi-Fact] found that half true because basically they don't think that Mitt Romney likes to be quoted saying "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" or something, even though he did.
So half true?
Politi-Fact looked into last night whether he [Obama] used the phrase act of terror.
"No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation."
Politi-Fact in its assessment said, yes he did say that but it's only half true because he didn't mean it when he said it.
This infection is leading the conservative media, these baldly false conservative feel-good assertions that come from the right end up becoming just the other side of a political issue.
We're taking an objective look and that is bull. Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, the unemployment rate is under 8%. The day after the Benghazi attack, the President called it an act of terror.
Do not confuse your World Net Daily caliber fantasy babble for what actually happened, because stuff really does actually happen. And eventually you really do have to deal with it.
Meet Republican Representative Dr. Paul Broun (GA). This week he told supporters:
"God's word is true. I've come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the big bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell. It's lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior. You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I've found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I don't believe that the earth's but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That's what the Bible says."
Broun is a high-ranking member of the House Science Committee, of which Rep. Todd "Legitimate Rape" Akin (R-Mo.) is also a member. Again, that's the House SCIENCE Committee.
This is what happens when you elect Republicans to public office.
Earlier this week, we reported on Maryland Republican Rep. Roscoe Bartlett who echoed party pariah Todd Akin's comments about how unlikely it is for rapes to result in pregnancy (the nasty suggestion being if you got pregnant from a rape, perhaps it wasn't a "legitimate rape").
Well, it looks like, in a desperate attempt to win a tough relection, Bartlett's decided to go Full Tea Party.
In a town hall, Batlett claimed that Federal Student loans can lead to the Holocaust.
"If you can ignore the Constitution to do something good today, tomorrow you will be ignoring the Constitution to do something bad," Barlett said. "There are more people in our, in America today of German ancestry than any other [inaudible]. The Holocaust that occurred in Germany - how in the heck could that happen? And when you start down the wrong road, it can be a very slippery slope."
Yes, according to Republican Bartlett, helping students get an education puts us, as a country, on the path to an unspeakable genocide.
Every vote for this tool is a mark of shame for the state of Maryland.
