The Meat Puppets: "Backwater"
New NC Restrictions Will Become Law
A month ago, NC gov Beverly Perdue got our quote of the day when she said this in regards to vetoing the proposed legislation that created new hurdles to women seeking a legal health service:
"Physicians must be free to advise and treat their patients based on their medical knowledge and expertise and not have their advice overridden by elected officials seeking to impose their own ideological agenda on others."Well, yesterday the NC legislature has overridden her veto. The law requires women to have an ultrasound, a 24-hour waiting period, and state-written counseling delivered as a speech by her doctor. Women will be required to hear about the health risks of abortion and also "abortion alternatives". Apparently women who are seeking abortions in NC have no awareness of any other option and haven't thought them out, amirite?
Oh and it gets even better because anyone who does not follow these new regulations can now be sued by a woman who had an abortion--or one who nearly did and changed her mind. Or her spouse/partner. Or her parent(s)/guardian(s). OR her sibling(s).
The new law will take effect in 90 days.
Obama on Debt Talks
Quote of the Day
[Trigger warning for sexual violence.]
"I was ready to die but give my consent never. Never, never."—Rosa Parks, from an essay about "nearly being raped by a white neighbor who employed her as a housekeeper in 1931." The six-page handwritten document was found among her papers "currently residing in the Manhattan warehouse and cramped offices of Guernsey's Auctioneers, which has been selected by a Michigan court to find an institution to buy and preserve the complete archive."
Civil rights historian Danielle McGuire said she had never before heard of the attempted rape of Parks and called the find among Parks' papers astounding.That was a woman with a teaspoon the size of Texas.
It helps explain what triggered Parks' lifelong campaign against the ritualistic rape of black women by white men, said McGuire, whose recent book "At the Dark End of the Street" examines how economic intimidation and sexual violence were used to derail the freedom movement and how it went unpunished during the Jim Crow era.
"I thought it was because of the stories that she had heard. But this gives a much more personal context to that," said McGuire, an assistant professor of history at Wayne State University in Detroit.
...McGuire wondered why Parks omitted the attempted rape incident from her memoirs but included the story about the little boy who threatened her.
"It shows some kind of conscious effort in shaping her own legacy but also, I think, speaks to the issue of respectability. She doesn't necessarily feel comfortable telling the world about what happened," she said. "But she's contemplating telling people about it because she's written it down."
Open Thread & News Round-Up: Debt Negotiations
Here's the latest...
Peter Daou sums up where we are: "So, two parties are bickering over opposing plans to sink the country into recession and if they can't pick one, they'll torpedo the economy." Pretty much.
As I mentioned last night, "House Republican leaders have postponed indefinitely a vote on Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) debt limit bill after they could not persuade enough Republicans to support the measure."
You know we're really in trouble when Joe Klein is a voice of reason: "Let us not put too fine a point on it: [Any] House vote on Speaker John Boehner's debt ceiling proposal is a joke. If it passes the House, Harry Reid has said it is dead on arrival in the Senate. If it somehow passes the Senate, which it won't, President Obama will veto it. It is, therefore, a symbolic act that is wasting precious time. It follows last week's Republican theatrics, the passage of the Cut and Demolish Act (or whatever they called it), which also was a waste of time. These are the actions of a party that has completely lost track of reality–and of a leader, John Boehner, who has lost the support of his party."
By the way, that lack of support is owing, in part, to the fact that there are members of the Republican caucus who "are angry that it includes $17 billion in supplemental spending for Pell Grants, which some compare to welfare."
In the sense that Pell Grants are money provided by the government to people who need it, they are like welfare, which I don't consider a dirty word. Of course, that is not an opinion members of the Republican caucus share with me. Which is basically why we're in the situation we're in—a fundamental disagreement about the role of government and "entitlements," which Republicans spit out like a curse. Personally, I don't find anything controversial about the idea that old, ill, injured, disabled, widowed, orphaned, poor, unemployed, or otherwise needful people are entitled to assistance from the rest of their society.
Anyway, speaking of the Republicans being jackasses...
James Fallows in The Atlantic: Five Reasons the House GOP Is to Blame. (And he doesn't let the Democrats off the hook, either.)
Over at the New York Times, Paul Krugman takes a further look at the disaster that is centrism:
The cult of balance has played an important role in bringing us to the edge of disaster. ... Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. As you may know, President Obama initially tried to strike a "Grand Bargain" with Republicans over taxes and spending. To do so, he not only chose not to make an issue of G.O.P. extortion, he offered extraordinary concessions on Democratic priorities: an increase in the age of Medicare eligibility, sharp spending cuts and only small revenue increases. As The Times's Nate Silver pointed out, Mr. Obama effectively staked out a position that was not only far to the right of the average voter's preferences, it was if anything a bit to the right of the average Republican voter's preferences.For further general reading, there's a lot of good stuff in the Guardian's Economics section.
But Republicans rejected the deal. So what was the headline on an Associated Press analysis of that breakdown in negotiations? "Obama, Republicans Trapped by Inflexible Rhetoric." A Democratic president who bends over backward to accommodate the other side — or, if you prefer, who leans so far to the right that he's in danger of falling over — is treated as being just the same as his utterly intransigent opponents. Balance!
...Many pundits view taking a position in the middle of the political spectrum as a virtue in itself. I don't. Wisdom doesn't necessarily reside in the middle of the road, and I want leaders who do the right thing, not the centrist thing.
Question of the Day
What was the last gift you gave someone?
"Someone" doesn't have to be limited to someone else; if the last gift you gave was to yourself, that counts, too.
Debtpocalypse Update
Reportedly, there will not be a House vote on Boehner's plan today after all. The vote is being postponed for Maude only knows what reason (probably because Boehner didn't have the votes), but I'm sure it can only make things worse!
I'll just go ahead and second D-Day: "The Boehner austerity plan is postponed, raising hopes that the Reid austerity plan has a path to passage. How exciting!"
lolsob.
Quote of the Day
"Obviously gay marriage is not fine with me."—Texas Governor Rick Perry.
OBVIOUSLY. Because, in addition to being garbage governor of the great state of Texas, he is also a Semi-Professional, Full-Tilt, World-Class, Grade-A, Award-Winning, Multi-Multihyphenate Dipfuck of Epic Proportions.
To provide some superfun context for this quote, Perry was "clarifying" previous remarks about same-sex marriage being legalized in New York, which sounded like he might whooooooooops actually support it. Heavens to Mergatroyd!
Texas Gov. Rick Perry wants you to know he isn't fine with gay marriage.So, make no mistake, people: Rick Perry is STILL A BIGOT!
In an interview with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins he hedged controversial comments made at a dinner in Aspen last week when he said, "Our friends in New York six weeks ago passed a statute that said marriage can be between two people of the same sex. You know what? That's New York, and that's their business, and that's fine with me."
"I probably needed to add a few words after that 'it's fine with me,'" Perry admitted to Perkins Thursday.
And he repeated his commitment to the 10th amendment as well as his conviction that marriage should be between a man and a woman. "It's fine with me that a state is using their sovereign rights to decide an issue. Obviously gay marriage is not fine with me. My stance hasn't changed."
Recommended Reading
Julianne Hing: Raquel Nelson and the Aggressive Prosecutions of Black Mothers. I'm not even going to excerpt it; it really just needs to be read in full.
[H/T to @GarlandGrey.]
Number of the Day
$117,437: The amount of money Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ealpieceofwork), "who has spent months lecturing President Obama and Democrats on fiscal responsibility," owes in back child support.
When the Tea Party totesfuck was asked about his deadbeatery by CNN, Walsh replied: "I know that story just broke, and it's interesting that it just broke right now as I'm out there trying my best to fight this President and fight the Democrats and solve this debt crisis. But look, I'm the most openly vetted candidate in the world. I have had financial troubles and I talked about them throughout the campaign. This is where real America is."
Yup. He understands the plight of "Real Americans" because he's stiffing his kids, despite having the resources to loan his own campaign $35,000.
Daily Dose of Cute
All day, Dudley and Zelda are quiet as little church-mice while I work, and then, all evening, it's WRASSLIN' TIME!!! They looooooove playing tug-of-war, and would literally play all night if we let them. It isn't a dominance game (at least it's not so far, and we only let them play it if we're watching, so we can keep an eye on it): If one of them manages to actually "win," they flop the toy immediately back at the other one, to keep the game going. If I take away Pinkie, they play with a plush ice cream cone, and if I take away Coney, they just roll around together on the floor, play-biting each other's faces. If I make them "sit" to calm it down for a bit, they give me these pitiful looks as if to say, "Whyyyyyyy?! Why do you haaaaaaaaate us?! You're the WORST!" Then immediately set to running around snapping at flies as soon as I release them.
Dudley and Zelda run in a circle in the living room, each of them holding onto an end of a long thin squeaky toy known as Pinkie, playing tug-of-war with it. Zelda growls playfully. Both of their tails wag wildly. Offscreen, Iain walks into the room and can be heard sighing with mock exasperation: "Oh, dear. Come on, you two. Knock it off!" I laugh, and say, "Noooo! They're playing!" Iain sighs dramatically, as he pet s Dudley, who stands for the petting for about half a second before running back to play with Zelda.
Still holding onto Pinkie, Zelda jumps up onto the couch, then off the couch, then onto the loveseat, then off the loveseat. I laugh. "They're so funny!" Squeak squeak squak as they wrestle. Zelda's jaws are a lot stronger than Dudley's, and when she gets it away from him, she flops the loose end back at him, so he can grab it again. She snarls playfully. "Ohhh," I say, as if she's ferocious, and then laugh.
On Harassment and the Marking of Visible Womanhood
[Trigger warning for misogyny, rape culture.]
So, yesterday we had this great thread about how telling people to "smile" is not merely impolite, but a gross disrespect of agency. As frequently happens in such threads, there was also discussion of other types of street harassment and getting hit on.
Often, we contributors/mods have our own private conversations about topics being discussed on the blog, especially when we want to chat about something tangential that would be a derail to the main point. Yesterday, in tandem with the aforementioned thread, we were talking about the truly fucked-up scenario in which women who deviate from traditional definitions of womanhood, or whose appearance is nonconforming to beauty standards, are excluded from such discussions by virtue of having rarely or never harassed in that way.
It's an important conversation, and it deserves its own thread.
It is a conversation I've had before with trans women, with fat cis women, women with noticeable physical disabilities, and with a women who has severe craniofacial deformities—the "I don't want to be treated like a piece of meat or an object or a possession, but because Visible Women are treated like pieces of meat and objects and possessions, the fact that I'm not makes me feel like I'm not even a woman" conversation.
The conversation about feeling excluded from the sisterhood, because you haven't been harassed in the way most women talk about being harassed.
None of the women with whom I've ever had this conversation want to be harassed, nor do they want other women to be harassed, either—and yet there is something akin to envy they feel, sheerly by virtue of being on the outside looking in.
Simultaneously, they feel guilty for feeling that way, because, to a harassed woman, there is nothing enviable about being harassed.
Except, of course, for how there is—because being harassed is a routine part of the Visible Woman's experience. And as long as women's value is determined by objectification, to not be objectified is to feel unvalued, even if to not be objectified is what you want.
This, of course, is not a commentary on women—objectified or not, feminist or not. This is a commentary on the Patriarchy, and how unfathomably fucked-up it is that a failure to be treated poorly—not in exchange for being treated well, but as an alternative to not being acknowledged at all—has the capacity to make women feel worthless.
What a choice: Acknowledged but harassed, or ignored and denied recognition of one's womanhood.
It's a terrible predicament, this place of horrible and shameful "envy," that most women (especially feminist women) probably experience at one time or another during their lives. An older woman finally free of being hit on and cat-called and told to smile may suddenly "miss" the harassment the despised, because its void is not born of a long-sought respect, but of a silent commentary on her diminished worth as a sex object per the Patriarchy's horseshit standards. Two female friends of different races might alternately "envy" each other for the unique forms of objectification by which they're respectively targeted: She gets harassed by people who ignore me because she looks like the Girl Next Door. She gets harassed by people who ignore me because she looks Exotic. Etc.
Knowing how fucked-up it is doesn't change that visceral feeling of alienation: We are all too keenly aware of the narratives used to marginalize us.
And this "envy" is not just about being recognized as a woman; it's also about getting access to the tables at which women sit.
I have had friends who have never been raped confess to me with wracking guilt that they "envy" my history, because to have survived rape is to have earned admission into what can be a very tight-knit group of survivors, not unlike a group of veterans who emerged from the trauma of war as "brothers," having experienced something outsiders cannot understand and sharing a bond outsiders cannot penetrate.
They needn't feel guilty: I understand what they are saying. They don't want me to have been raped. They are not minimizing it. They don't want to be raped themselves. They are simply acknowledging a feeling born of the reality that so many women are victimized by sexual violence that it can feel, to women who have not been, that a key part of what defines womanhood is missing from their histories.
We all view, if not consciously, sexual violence and harassment as a sort of rite of passage, a fire through which we must pass on our way to womanhood. To be denied that trial, even though we don't want it, is to be denied as Woman.
I can think of few things that more poignantly underline how truly and comprehensively woman-hating the Patriarchy is than its creation of an "envy" to be hurt, just to feel like a complete woman.
[Commenting Guidelines: Please note that if your immediate response to this is to assert that you've never experienced this "envy," that may well be a function of privilege. Visible Womanhood is an indicator of privilege—cis women tend to be more visible than trans women, straight women more visible than lesbians, white women more than women of color, able-bodied women more than women with disabilities, etc. I strongly encourage you, rather than reflexively challenging the concept, to listen to the experiences of less privileged women which will certainly be shared here.]
If We Really Lived in a Post-Feminist World...
...banning advertisements that are explicitly designed to fool, manipulate, and body-shame women into buying expensive products that cannot possibly deliver what is promised via the sneakery of Photoshop would be the rule, rather than the exception.
Well done, MP Jo Swinson.
Today in Totally Not Terrorism
[Trigger warning for anti-choice terrorism.]
There are a lot of things that don't get called terrorism in this country, but chief among them is the anti-choice movement, which is the most brazen, unapologetic terrorist campaign in the US, its co-ordination and orchestration done right out in the open, where no one in the media or politics will call it what it is. It is an inherently violent ideology, backed by a decades-long campaign of intimidation, harassment and violence directed at abortion providers and abortion seekers, that is ignored by one party and mainstreamed as a central plank of its party platform by the other.
Tuesday night, in McKinney, Texas, another Planned Parenthood clinic was the target of another incident of Totally Not Terrorism, during which, fortunately, no one was physically injured:
A heavy glass door is all that stood between damaging flames threatening a family planning clinic in McKinney and an arsonist's sights.This shit doesn't happen in a void. Now even clinics that are providing exclusively preventative care to women are being targeted by terrorists because of the incendiary rhetoric of Republicans across the nation who demonize abortion, demonize abortion providers and abortion seekers, and mendaciously frame Planned Parenthood as an abortion mill.
McKinney police and fire crews responded to a small fire that broke out around 10:05 p.m. Tuesday at the front door of the Planned Parenthood clinic, located in a block of stories in the 1700 block of Eldorado Parkway, clinic, police and fire officials confirmed on Wednesday.
...Holly Morgan, director of communications for Planned Parenthood of North Texas in Dallas, said the person or persons involved in the attack threw a Molotov cocktail, consisting of diesel fuel in a glass bottle with a lit rag, at the clinic's front door.
...The incident is also unique because the McKinney location does not provide surgical procedures or abortions for their approximately 4,000 clients, Morgan said.
"It's an all-preventive care location: well-woman visits, breast and cervical cancer screenings, birth control," she said. "They don't provide legal safe abortions, only preventive care."
As an interesting side note, the original URL at which this story appears to have been located now takes you to a story about a local town winning an award for online financial transparency. That story also appears in their Most Popular, Most Emailed, and Most Commented sections, which seems wildly unlikely given the content.
The mysterious switcheroo happened after Ben Armbruster linked to it from Think Progress. (I mentioned it to him this morning, and now his piece has been updated with the correct link, which he also helpfully provided to me.) Naturally, I can certainly imagine how and why such a mysterious switcheroo might have happened, although I'm quite certain such expressions of cynicism would be resoundingly dismissed as the fantastic hysteria typical of people who write about Lady Business.
Open Thread & News Round-Up: Debt Negotiations
Here's the latest...
TPMDC—Hope for Boehner? Some House Conservatives Closing Ranks on Debt Limit Bill: "On Tuesday, conservative Republican Study Committee chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) predicted defeat for House Speaker John Boehner's (R-OH) plan to raise the debt limit. ... He was counting on the opposition of dozens of House conservatives who have in the past pledged not to raise the debt limit on terms that compromising with Democrats would require. Twenty-four hours later, after taking a beating from the GOP establishment and party leadership, and after watching Democrats grow more and more confident in their ability to split the Republican coalition, those conservatives are reconsidering their rebellion."
But outside Congress...
The Hill—Tea Party leader: Boehner must go: "Tea Party Nation leader Judson Phillips called on House Speaker John Boehner 'to go' and be replaced by a 'Tea Party Speaker of the House' in a blog post Wednesday morning, the same day that Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, said that her group was looking into the same idea. 'Now Boehner is in the process of surrendering again. He is surrendering not to [President] Obama, but to the status quo in Washington,' Phillips wrote."
Back in the Speaker's office...
Think Progress—Boehner: 'A Lot' of Republicans Want to Force Default, Create 'Enough Chaos' to Pass Balanced Budget Amendment: "House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said today that some members of his own caucus who are refusing to agree to a compromise debt ceiling deal are hoping to unleash 'chaos' and thus force the White House and Senate Democrats to make bigger concessions than they're already offering."
Oh, look who's talking...
The Note—McCain Blasts Tea Party for 'Foolish' Demands in Debt Debate:
"To hold out and say we won't agree to raising the debt limit until we pass a Balanced Budget Amendment to the constitution. It's unfair, it's bizarre," McCain railed on the Senate floor, "And maybe some people have only been in this body for six or seven months or so really believe that. Others know better."When John McCain is your voice of reason, Republicans, you have DERAILED.
Many of the most conservative members of the House have said they will not vote for any debt ceiling increase that does not include a Balanced Budget Amendment and deeper spending cuts. Similarly, some conservatives Republicans in the Senate have said the same.
McCain called this "amazing," "foolish" and "deceiving" that some members believe that this can happen, now with only 6 days left until the nation defaults on its debts with the August 2 deadline for action looming.
"To somehow think or tell our citizens that if we have enough debate and amendment here in the Senate in the short term in the next six days that we will pass a balanced budget amendment to the constitution is unfair to our constituents," McCain said.
McCain is a supporter of a Balanced Budget Amendment but does not believe that the station now, just six days away from the August 2 deadline for action, is the correct time to be pushing for this when it does not stand a chance when connected to the debt ceiling increase.
The Caucus—Senate Democrats Promise to Reject Boehner Plan: "Fifty-three Democratic senators have signed a letter to House Speaker John A. Boehner saying they intend to vote against his plan for an increase in the debt ceiling, virtually assuring its defeat in the Senate even as the speaker lines up Republican votes to pass it in the House on Thursday. Votes are not final until they are cast. But if the Democrats hold to their promise in the letter, Mr. Boehner's plan for a six-month increase in borrowing authority will not make it to President Obama's desk."
D-Day at FireDogLake: "Both parties have insistently harped on the desirability of cutting the deficit for the past six months [at the expense of progressive economic options]. The public may not be tuned in, but they pick up on these broad themes, and since there has been no debate on public investment in job creation, they naturally gravitated toward the fantasy of expansionary contraction. To those who want to say that the President is making the best of a bad situation, THIS is the problem. It changes the entire dynamic of the realm of possible economic solutions for the next decade or more. And when the economy suffers from austerity, since a Democrat basically called for it, that's who will be blamed."
David at Hullabaloo: "As if the White House couldn't get any more dense, members of President Obama's text message feed received the following today: 'Join President Obama in calling on Congress for a balanced approach to reducing the deficit. Contact your House representative at [number].' You've got to be kidding. Since the Grand Bargain is pretty much dead, there are only two plans on the table, and they're pretty similar: Harry Reid's right-wing austerity approach that counts savings from reductions in spending on the wars overseas while shifting the need to take up this argument again until after the 2012 election, and John Boehner's even farther right-wing austerity measure that doesn't count those savings, while forcing everyone to go through this fight again early next year."
Question of the Day
What do you say to dogs and/or cats when you meet them for the first time?
Me-
Dogs: "Hey you! What are you doin'?"
Cats: "Get a job!"
If you tend to talk to other animals, by all means, include them. And yes, I know about the xkcd cartoon.
HOORAY! (Sarcasm.)
You have all been emailing me NONSTOP about how much you love Horrible Bosses, so you will be delighted to hear that it made lots of money at the box office and thus is there already talk of a sequel!
I can't wait until the sequel gets made, and comes out in theaters, and makes lots of money, and then comes out on Streaming Laser Robot-Disc or however we watch movies IN THE FUTURE, and then all of you can come over to my house and we can make popcorn and watch a double-feature of The Hangover 2 and Horrible Bosses 2: Shit Is About to Get Horribler! and WE WILL ALL BE SO HAPPY!
Pillow fiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!
