Asshats on Parade - Evil Women Edition - Charles Van Zant, Grand Marshal

Women Legislators walked out of a debate on a new anti abortion bill in Florida.

"A debate in Florida's House of Representatives over a Republican-sponsored ban on race- and sex-selective abortions became extremely heated Thursday, causing several black women lawmakers to walk out in protest. 

House Bill 845, sponsored by Rep. Charles Van Zant (R-Keystone Heights), would make it a third-degree felony in Florida to perform an abortion based on the race or gender of the fetus. Van Zant accused Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers of intentionally targeting black people. "The fact is, 80 percent of abortion clinics nationwide are located in minority neighborhoods where 43 percent of all black babies are aborted," Van Zant said, according to the Tampa Bay Times." - Laura Bassett, Huffpo

Van Zant

I gave Van Zant the AssHat Award for this sentence alone. Van Zant stated "In America alone, without the Naxi holocaust, without the Ku Klux Klan, Planned Parenthood and other abortionists have reduced our black population by more than 25 percent since 1973. This is called discriminatory targeting."

The premises Van Zant is arguing here are:

Evil women have abortions for evil reasons at the request of evil organizations. Everybody knows that. A black woman is a potential Shoah just standing there in her shoes and must be specially provided for by House Bill 845.

One citizen of Dumbfuckistan cannot imagine why the 
Black women Legislators walked out and chimed in "How is it racism if they don't want black babies to be singled out for abortions?"

I got questions for the DumbFuck and AssHat Van Zant.

Is all this sheet* going to come down on black women who abort black babies only? What if a black woman is having a white baby? Does she get to have her abortion then? And what if a white woman is having a black baby? Or a red or yellow baby? Womb as Color TV. You got special probes for that? 

How will this law be enforced? What are you willing to do to women, Van Zant, to enforce this law? I sent this to Van Zant. Think I will get an answer? AssHat. 

* Yes, this is a pun and I intentionally committed it. 

This comment is from Prion at JoeMyGod - S/He Speaks to My Condition

Prion • 8 hours ago

-We can't stop giving tax dollars to insanely profitable oil companies.

-We can't effectively regulate Wall Street or indict any of those responsible for the 2008 economic collapse.

-We can't stop corporations from off-shoring profits to avoid taxes.

-We can't do anything to correct our horrific income and wealth inequality (but we're pretty good at making it worse).

- We can't effectively regulate the monopoly-based telecom industry which continues to rip off millions of Americans every day.

-We can't do anything to significantly reign in our huge military spending.

-We can't hold accountable any of the politicians who lied us into an illegal, unnecessary, bloody and costly war with Iraq.

-We can't hold accountable anyone responsible for violating US and International laws against the use of torture.

--- We can't possibly be a democratic republic.

The illustration is the cover of an excellent book Revolutionary Mothers - Women in the Struggle for America's Independence by Carol Berkin. I am in a Revolutionary FemiNazi state of mind. 

Political Sign of the Month - April 2013

Advertising is the greatest artform of the 20th century. - Marshall McLuhan. 

I had a difficult time selecting the best Political Sign for April. I found the fabulous Political Loudmouth political sign website. You can go there and select your favorite. This one is my favorite because it is fiery. I am thinking it needs to be a Tshirt. 

The word sign has a number of meanings. The Oxford Dictionary says that a sign is

An object, quality, or event whose presence or occurrence indicates the probable presence or occurrence of something else.

Given that definition, I am going to propose that this House is really a Sign. I am not April Fooling. "The medium is the massage/message." -  Marshall McLuhan. 

Shaming and Blaming

Being an Anarchist and a generally Odd Person is trying on a regular basis. I say the Serenity Prayer a lot. And I need to . . . God grant me . . . 

My natural and instinctive response to North Dakota's new abortion laws is to fantasize burning the North Dakota State House down. These bills will kill women and harm families. 

Sanity came back when I read the Editorial in the Fargo-Moorhead Forum. The last paragraph in the editorial says it all:

The governor’s decision to sign the bills is more than a disappointment. He has unnecessarily put the state into a costly and losing legal struggle. More importantly, his deference to legislative malfeasance dismisses women’s rights and undermines best practices of medicine in North Dakota.

Be a terrible sin and shame to harm such a beautiful Art Deco building. And going to jail like the Cheryl Sullenger  filth is beneath me. Crazy person that I am, I am no terrorist.

So, having read the excellent editorial in the Forum, I was all kool and feeling reassured that there are sane folks in North Dakota, until I went to a message board and read this comment. And then I got upset all over again.

"These same politicians want to ensure that effective and efficient birth control is not available and they see abortion as birth control. It's not, but there seems to be no way of convincing these "folks" of that."

A big part of the oppressive control of women is shaming and blaming. I know this is a good pro choice person who sees herself as enlightened. And indeed, she is that. And yet, she is apologizing for women who do or might use abortion as birth control. She is apologizing because ultimately, in some obscure corner of her psyche, she feels shame about abortion. And that shaming is the only argument Forced Birthers really have, when I think about it. This is stupid counter productive pearl clutching. 

So I say, take a good hard look at reality, shall we? Anthropologically speaking, Homo Sapiens has three strategies for birth/population control - contraception, abortion and infanticide. These strategies are in use currently around the world.  Ipso facto. 

Those who restrict contraception and abortion make infanticide inevitable. That is immoral by any standard. My evidence? Ceausescu's Romania and the murder of street children in Central and South America and in India. Am I the only one who sees this?

Up Your Giggy, George W. Bush, Sideways

Wish George W. Bush a Happy Iraq War Day: Here is His Private Email Address - from Gawker

As we mentioned earlier, a hacker calling himself (or herself) Guccifer has penetrated the electronic worlds of George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, and a number of other political figures. Screengrabs of various email conversations that Bush, Clinton, and others have participated in have been floating around the internet. And it has come to our attention on this, the day of the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq on the orders of George W. Bush, that one of those screengrabs credibly displays Bush's private email address. 

It is: gwb@ogwb.org. Please let him know that you're thinking of him today.

http://gawker.com/5991411/wish-george-w-bush-a-happy-iraq-war-day-here-is-his-private-email-address?post=58405543

Frosting the Turd with UPDATE

The Republicans are making no plans to change their ignorant sexually repressive platform. They are aware that Tod Akin might as well have entered the national parlor and left a turd on the rug. So they are going to deodorize it as outlined in the Roll Call article I excerpt below. If you missed the event, I provide the video in question. 

Inside the NRSC's Comeback Strategy

• By Kyle Trygstad

• Roll Call Staff

• March 4, 2013, 6:53 p.m.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee plans to expand its press operation to train campaigns earlier in the cycle on how to better handle the kind of candidate missteps that have plagued its party’s nominees. The goal? To avoid what’s become known in GOP circles as “Todd Akin moments.”

“The campaigns that jumped off message not only infected themselves, they infected all the rest of the campaigns,” said Rob Collins, the new NRSC executive director, in his first extensive interview on the job. “So in this age of fractured but continuous, three-dimensional communication, we have to constantly plan for that and train for that and build for that.”

UPDATE:   The Growth and Opportunity Project  Report has been released. The Report evaluates what the GOP must do if they want to win elections. The report suggests that Republicans communicate their values to minorities more effectively. I excerpt part of the Report's recommendations for Women. 

5. Republicans should develop a more aggressive response to Democrat rhetoric regarding a so-called “war on women.” In 2012, the Republican response to this attack was muddled, and too often the attack went undefended altogether. We need to actively combat this, better prepare our surrogates, and not stand idly by while the Democrats pigeonhole us using false attacks. There are plenty of liberal policies that negatively impact women, and it is incumbent upon the party to expose those and relentlessly attack Democrats using that framework. 

There is not one mention of "legitimate rape" bills. No mention of attempts to relegislate Roe v. Wade and defund Planned Parenthood. We all saw that with our own eyes. They plan to language it all away. I find Republicans "scary" too: 

Now that we know their play (Frost the turd with yummy chocolate before they try to make us eat it again.), we must never never never give them credence or power again. Why? This is their playbook: 

“It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise.” 
― Joseph Goebbels

Political Sign of the Month - March 2013

Bless this Woman just standing there in her blue hat. Bless all the women and the photographer too. A special shout out to the guys way in the left and right corners of the photograph. Way to go, Dudes. God love prochoice men just standing there in their socks. I know S/He does.

Protesters opposed to legislation requiring women seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound demonstrated outside the Idaho Capitol in Boise on March 21, 2012. (AP Photo/Jessie L. Bonner)

Rabid Racism and the Voting Rights Act

Eclectablog, the premier Michigan events and politics blog, brings us the story of two Black Nurses suing for racial discrimination in the workplace. 

2nd nurse sues Hurley Hospital for complying with racist’s demands; original lawsuit goes to federal court

A second nurse has joined Tonya Battle in filing a lawsuit against Flint hospital Hurley Medical Center. Carlotta Armstrong claims that ... she was subjected to racial discrimination when administrators complied with a blatantly racist father’s demand that no African American nurses care of his baby in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).

What a fricking mess. In my opinion, this racist man presented a serious security risk for the whole hospital. White supremacist racists cannot be regarded as rational and must be thought of as dangerous given the bomb found at a MLK Day parade. 

The hospital had a big problem that was really scary. And by law hospitals cannot decline to treat someone for having an unfortunate or frightening political opinion. And the hospital is responsible for safety of everyone in the hospital. 

Unfortunately, the hospital chose a top-down solution. They put up a sign instructing Black nurses not to handle the racist's baby. All the nurses went ballistic. Professional dignity alone would demand nurses object, never mind respect for colleagues whatever their race, religion or politics. 

The smart way to deal with it would have been to call a meeting of the whole nursing and security staff and give them input into the decision making. And honor that input. The whole staff might all very well have decided to humor the scary man. No doubt in my mind that is the best course of action. That group decision would not have been imposed upon black staff. Democracy works. Maybe we should all give it a try. 

The Voting Rights Act of 1964 is up for renewal. I was in High School in the early Sixties. I had a friend who was a great artist. He also happened to be black. Nobody is pinker than me and I had red hair. One day I exuberantly took his hand while we were walking down the street. Traffic stopped. Catcalls began. We were engaged in shocking unacceptable behavior. Just ambling along. 

Two coffee houses, the Trivia and the Capri, were shut down because students from the High School went there to hear Beat poetry and play chess. No alcoholic beverages. Black and white folks together. Unacceptable. It was a "friend" of mine who reported the fraternization to high school authorities. And the Trenton Suits shut that whole thing down. 

Alabama, did you say? It was Trenton New Jersey in 1960. Race relations in this country were bad news for everyone. I do not want to go back to that. Once was enough. We cannot do without the Voting Rights Act. Especially in light of the voter suppression billboards that mysteriously appeared in minority neighborhoods this last election.