[Content Note: Anti-choice terrorism.]
On Tuesday, I wrote about a fire at a women's clinic in Pensacola, Florida, which had previously been bombed twice and was the site of the fatal shootings of Dr. John Britton and clinic escort James Barrett.
Today, Bobby Joe Rogers, 41, of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, was arrested and federally charged with one count of Damaging a Building by Fire or Explosive, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years.
He is (allegedly) a terrorist. This was terrorism.
Hey, do you remember in 1992 when Pearl Jam played MTV's "Unplugged," and Eddie Vedder had PRO-CHOICE scrawled down his arm?
Why I am proud to call Pearl Jam friends of mine, reason eleventy billionSo great.
So this happened:
Thanksgiving weekend saw a rash of burglaries in Burlington's Old North End. Among the victims was Ben Hardy, a Seven Days freelance music critic, who returned from a ten-day vacation last week to find his house had been broken into and burglarized.But wait, it gets suckier. The guitar was recovered, but the thieves had sanded off the signatures — presumably to make it less recognizable.
The thieves got away with a veritable studio's worth of musical items, including five guitars, two amps, a sound system and a turntable, as well as some clothing. But they also made off with something invaluable and irreplaceable: A Fender Telecaster signed by the members of Pearl Jam, given to Hardy's late older brother, Joshua, when he was a teenager.
In 1991, when he was 16, Joshua Hardy was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. The following year, he was granted a wish by the Make-A-Wish Foundation to meet his favorite Seattle grunge bands …unquestionably, the highlight of the trip was receiving the signed Tele from Pearl Jam. Joshua Hardy died a few months later.
So this is how the band responded when they heard about it:
Just before heading home to Durham, N.H., for Christmas, Hardy was surprised with an unexpected delivery. "FedEx delivered a new guitar," he said. "In a note Pearl Jam said they've been following the story and this is what they decided to do. It's an amazing gesture of goodwill. It exceeds expectations … They went above and beyond."I know Ed a lot better than I know the rest of the band, but I've dealt with all of them enough to know that they're genuinely decent guys. This is just one more example of that.
Ben and Josh's mom, Donna Hardy, said, "It's a blessing for our family to have all this happen. This is our Christmas story. Pearl Jam is amazing and to think that they remembered Josh after all these years is incredible."
[Content Note: This post contains a description of a minor injury with some blood loss.]
by Shaker TC
[Comment Note: This post contains discussion of anti-choice narratives and violence.]
I have mixed feelings about the public radio show "This American Life," but a segment in their Nemeses episode on the abortion debate in Boston made me nauseated to the core of my being. (The transcript is here; bring a barf bag.) "This American Life" decides to double down on the Jon Stewart-eqsue "both sides do it" meme for the abortion debate. Ira Glass is oozing with unacknowledged privilege as he talks about the attempt for the two sides of the debate to find common ground. The frame of the entire piece is that both sides of the debate are equally responsible for the dynamic.
Here's the kicker for me: This "both sides do it" frame is in the context of an abortion clinic shooting.
Along with Ira Glass, the host of "This American Life," the key commentator on the issue is white male academic Peter Coleman from the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution at Columbia University.
Peter Coleman: I think the pro-life movement was ashamed and infuriated by what had happened. I think the pro-choice movement was terrified and traumatized. And so the governor, the archdiocese, called for dialogue.Notice that the people directly affected by the shooting weren't calling for dialogue with a movement with which the killers identified and were affiliated. But they were nonetheless obliged to participate in unwanted bridge-building to make the patriarchy feel better.
Peter Coleman: At first, the conversation was hard. Even though they agreed to some guidelines and how to have this conversation in a way that they felt would be constructive, it was hard to hold to those guidelines initially.So, the abortion rights supporters, whose community is being terrorized, are disallowed from feeling that members of a movement with which a terrorist was involved could or should be held accountable. That's just finger-pointing.
Ira Glass: And you write about that, that there was a lot of finger pointing back and forth. Everybody thought, we're not going to do any finger pointing. But in fact, they couldn't help themselves is what you write.
Peter Coleman: It's what they did. It's what they had been doing. They were used to doing it. They knew the talking points. And it was so hard to try to put those away.
Ira Glass: These are precisely the conflicts that Peter Coleman studies. They're the conflicts where whatever the original dispute happened to be about, everybody has moved past that long ago. And things have snowballed. And people started to organize their identities around the conflict.As an abortion rights activist, I know damn well what I'm fighting for. It's not some long-held grudge. It's the bodily autonomy of women. Refer to any one of Melissa's awesome posts on Jon Stewart on why this attitude of "stop the bickering" when it comes to issues of human rights is so nauseating. If Ira Glass believes that the issue of abortion rights is based on some petty grudge that everyone has moved past, he has the empathy of a rock.
Peter Coleman: Because what did happen is that the rhetoric changed. The conversations that would happen publicly around abortion, around pro-life, pro-choice, lost a lot of the edge and the vitriol in the community that it had had prior to the shooting and prior to the dialogue process.Yep, apparently, abortion rights folks share responsibility for an anti-abortion shooter coming into their offices. The pro-choice advocates had to do some real soul-searching to see how they contributed to a shooting happening in their clinic to their clients, I'm sure.
Ira Glass: Because these women were leaders in those movements on both sides and—
Peter Coleman: They consciously decided that part of what they had done is contribute to the conditions where an event like this could take place.
[Content Note: This post contains a discussion of ABC's new sitcom "Work It," which is profoundly misogynist, transphobic, racist, and classist, and also uses rape jokes.]
Last month, Eastsidekate wrote about a new sitcom coming to ABC called "Work It," about, in Kate's words, "dudes who pretend to be chicks so they can get a job, because that's totally how things work in the world."
"Work It" premiered this week, to rave reviews. And by "rave reviews," I mean Deeky and me ranting and raving about what an absolute fuckshite garbage nightmare disaster it is.
LAST NIGHT:
Deeky: I am watching "Work It."
Liss: I am watching a re-run of "Big Bang Theory."
Deeky: Holy fucking god! This is soooo terrible! You MUST watch it! Really. Watch it before it disappears down the memory hole. It's fucking amazing.
Liss: LOL! Okay. I'll put it on when this is over.
Deeky: It is just soooooooo fucking misogynist. Who thinks women behave like that?
Liss: Is it OnDemand?
Deeky: Yes. That's how I'm watching it.
Liss: Ah, found it. Starting it now…
Deeky: Enjoy!
Liss: Thirty seconds in and there's a rape joke. Awesome. "Stop comparing prostate exams to the pinball scene in The Accused." Wow.
Deeky: I know, right?!
Liss: Mancession. Oh dear.
"The state cannot be in the business of discrimination. It was that. It was my children. It was the children of friends. It was friends. It was leaders that, I finally said to myself, 'It's time to do the right thing.' And let me just tell you, I feel so much better today than I have for the last seven years."—Washington Governor Chris Gregoire, who announced yesterday that "she wants Washington to become the seventh state in the nation to make gay marriage legal."
She will personally introduce the bill to allow same-sex couples to get married in Washington state.
"I can't sit here any longer and say it's okay to discriminate," she said. "My church, all the churches, can exercise their freedom on deciding who to marry, but the state of Washington cannot, cannot, engage in discrimination."Right on.
OMG, y'all! I'm really concerned about how you're handling the devastation of Michele Bachmann dropping out of the Republican Primary. Are you okay? I hope you are okay. If you start feeling overwhelmed with grief, let this thought cheer you: Now that Bachmann is gone, we are guaranteed that a straight white rich man will secure the Republican nomination. There. Don't you feel better already?
Speaking of the straight white rich man who's going to secure the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney. That's it. Subject, predicate, the end. He's going to win. All the rest of this is bluster and balderdash, until he stumbles his way to the stage at the Republican convention, picks some other straight white rich dude who appeals to evangelicals as his running mate, and then gets eaten alive by President Obama at the debates. Now please enjoy this AP wire photo of Mitt Romney staring dreamily at John McCain.
[Content Note: This post contains expressions of misogyny.]
One hopes that, at minimum, he is aware we are not actually from Venus:
His career has shed light on the secrets of the universe, from the nature of space-time to the workings of black holes, but there is one conundrum that still baffles the world's most famous scientist.I suppose that's meant to be charming or some shit, but one of the most brilliant male scientists on the planet talking about women as if we're a different species is not charming: It is rage-makingly Othering, and profoundly immature to boot.
In an interview to mark his 70th birthday this weekend, Stephen Hawking, the former Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, admitted he spent most of the day thinking about women. "They are," he said "a complete mystery."
What was your favorite film of 2011?
If you need a list to refresh your memory of the onslaught of garbage that was the year 2011 in film, here ya go! That list is English-language centered and not comprehensive; if you'd like to recommend alternative or supplemental lists in comments, please do.
I can barely even recall what films I saw last year. Of the ones that I remember seeing, my vote goes to Mission Impossible 4.
Runner-Up: The Muppets!
[Content Note: This post contains descriptions of bullying and GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum's odious social positions.]
asked his readers to coin a definition for "santorum" that would offend the [then-]Senator. He announced the winner as "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex." He created a web site to promote this definition, which became a prominent search result for Santorum's name on several web search engines.Now there are lots and lots of jokes about Santorum that play on Savage's appropriation of his name, most of them thinly-veiled homoerotic innuendo, natch. There have been several of them in comments over the last two days.
...In February 2011, Savage said he would resume his campaign. In a 2011 Funny or Die video, Savage proposed to redefine Santorum's first name if Santorum did not stop criticizing homosexuality. Later, in the August 17, 2011, edition of his Savage Love column, a reader suggested a redefinition in response to the video: "rick (v): to remove santorum orally. ("He was so grateful for the lay that he ricked his partner.") In the column Savage said: "Santorum hasn't laid off the gay bashing, as it's all he's got, so it looks like I'm going to have to go ahead and redefine his first name, too." He gave his apologies to "Rick Dees, Rick Fox, Ricki Lake, and all the other innocent Ricks out there" for the impact of this new definition, and then adopted the suggested redefinition.
President Obama made a really bold, decisive, and progressive decision today: During a speech in Ohio, he will announce the recess appointment of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was proposed by the awesome Elizabeth Warren.
(For whom Obama inexplicably would not use a recess appointment to install as chief of the CFPB when Senate Republicans threatened to tank her nomination. Still: Warren herself supports this move, so I will lay the fuck off.)
The thing about the CFPB is that Big Business never wants it to be a functional entity, because, if run as Elizabeth Warren intended it, the CFPB would make it much more difficult for Big Business to be in the business of ripping off consumers. And, as we all know, Big Business much prefers making enormo profits by lazily exploiting unprotected consumers and workers to making money the old-fashioned way—by providing solid products and services at reasonable prices that well-compensated employees can afford to buy. That's yucky! Ergo, the CFPB must be stopped.
Thus has Big Business dispatched their Congressional lackeys, known to you and I as the Republican Party, to make sure the CFPB never becomes a functional entity. And so Senate Republicans have endeavored to block Cordray's appointment and indefinitely stall the process.
To which President Obama just said: Phbbbbbbbbbbbbt!
[Content Note: This post contains discussion of public campaigns to shame fat children and/or their parents.]
Part One: My pal and sometime Shakesville contributor Erica Barnett forwarded this piece by Sarah Kliff in the WaPo about a campaign in Georgia (US) to raise awareness about "what childhood obesity actually looks like."
[Content Note: This post discusses state-sponsored anti-choice measures.]
First up is Alabama where new legislation went into effect Sunday:
New abortion reporting requirements will also go into effect Sunday under a law passed in the final hours of the 2011 regular session by the Alabama Legislature.So along with this new statute, Alabama is getting on the "personhood" train:
The law, sponsored by state Rep. Kerry Rich, R-Albertville, bans abortions from 20 weeks after "probable post-fertilization" except in cases of medical emergency. Previously, abortion was banned after fetal viability, defined by the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade as occurring between the 24th and 28th weeks of pregnancy.
The State Center for Health Statistics said 70 of the 10,280 abortions in Alabama in 2010 -- 0.6 percent of the procedures -- took place at the 20th week of gestation or after, the prior definition of abortion.
The ban went into effect in September; the added reporting requirements go into effect Sunday. Among other changes, physicians who perform abortions after 20 weeks will be required to list the medical reason for the abortion and whether the method used provided the opportunity to save the fetus.
Republican State Senator Phil Williams is the sponsor of the Alabama personhood bill SB5 which has been prefiled for the February 2012 Regular Session.Ms. Sasser, it wouldn't be ok even if it was "just" an anti-abortion bill.
“I personally believe that life begins at conception. I believe the majority of Alabamians also share that belief and I think it's high time that we did more than just talk in the privacy of our own homes about what we believe, but go ahead and act on that. That's why this particular bill is actually being revised. It will be substituted in the form of a constitutional amendment to allow the citizens of Alabama to vote on it," said Williams.
[...]
“The heart of the bill; ‘shall include any human being from the moment of fertilization and implantation into the womb’ is nonsense,” said Tipton [Sean, of American Society for Reproductive Medicine]. “There is no ‘moment’ of conception. It is a process that takes several hours at least. Implantation in the womb occurs at different time, and different place, than conception. So this wording is to say the least, unclear.”
"It's not okay because it's not an anti-abortion bill. It's not what they mean it to be it's ultimately affecting so many women's issues," said Jessica Sasser [volunteer with the National Infertility Association:RESOLVE].
Planned Parenthood will no longer be coordinating a local health-care program for uninsured women.So! Planned Parenthood is "controversial" to a particular segment of voters, therefore, you & your health department decided uninsured people cannot get necessary care there. I see.
Winnebago County will be taking over outreach and education services for the Wisconsin Well Woman Program in a four-county area that includes Fond du Lac County.
The announcement was made Dec. 23 by Department of Health Services Secretary Dennis Smith. The program had been hanging in limbo since Dec. 1, when Planned Parenthood was contacted by an employee at DHS and told that as of the new year the agency would no longer be facilitating the program for Fond du Lac, Winnebago, Outagamie and Sheboygan counties.
Gov. Scott Walker said the move was made because Planned Parenthood is “too controversial.”
“There are many clinics that are not as controversial as Planned Parenthood, and our goal was to make sure low-income women had access to those sorts of screenings from other providers around the state that don’t carry the controversy you get with Planned Parenthood,” he told reporters.
The anti-abortion movement scored an array of legislative victories in Ohio in 2011, but even after a record year, abortion foes are advocating for tighter restrictions in 2012.Ohio isn't the only state with pro-forced-pregnancy groups looking forward to pushing for less rights for actual people. Kansas, of course, is another.
[...]
On Friday, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine certified a petition by anti-abortion supporters allowing them to collect signatures for a “personhood” amendment that seeks to bestow fertilized human eggs with full personal rights.
[...]
“Never in the history of the pro-life movement have we had so many legislative measures enacted in one year,” Gonidakis [Mike, president of Ohio Right to Life] said.
New state laws prohibit public hospitals from performing abortions and ban abortion coverage in the insurance plans of local public employees.
Under new rules, the director of the Ohio Department of Health must apply for federal grants to fund abstinence education with the goal of cutting down on unplanned pregnancies. Anti-abortion student groups on college campuses now cannot be denied use of school funds or facilities.
Kasich also signed legislation that makes it harder for minors to get abortions without parental consent, and a law forbidding health insurance plans through the new federal health care law from providing coverage for abortions, except when the woman’s life is at risk or if she is a victim of rape or incest.
Lawmakers also passed a bill outlawing abortions that take place after 20 weeks if a doctor determines the fetus can live outside the womb.
This law was the “highlight” of the year, and imposes some of the most significant restrictions on abortions in decades, said Coudron [Paul, director], with Dayton Right to Life.
[...]
Emboldened by last year’s successes, Ohio Right to Life said it hopes this year to kill funding to Planned Parenthood, appropriate funds to centers that provide pregnant women with counseling and prenatal care and help elect a U.S. president and senator who share their views.
They say their goal is for an anti-abortion U.S. president and Senate to help seat Supreme Court justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade.
Right to Life groups also want state or federal lawmakers to pass a bill that requires pregnant women to either hear or see the fetal heartbeat before having an abortion.
Anti-abortion leaders in the Republican-controlled Legislature said they plan to strengthen legal protections for physicians, pharmacists and other health care professionals who don't want to participate in abortions or dispense abortion-inducing drugs. They hope to prevent even indirect taxpayer support for abortions and to add new requirements to a law spelling out what information doctors must provide to women seeking abortions.Chip, chip, chip. Anyone who dares to proclaim the tired ass phrase "But Roe!!!", needs to read that right there. Anyway:
[...]
...[L]eading anti-abortion legislators and Kansans for Life, the group with the most visible presence at the Statehouse, want to concentrate on proposals that are far more likely to pass and making measurable gains that stand."This is like a good ground game in football," said Mary Kay Culp, executive director of Kansans for Life, discussing its strategy of pursuing incremental legislative gains. "I don't believe that we have finished fleshing out every law that we can that is currently constitutional."
Just as in 2011, Brownback, a Republican abortion opponent, doesn't plant to propose any legislation, preferring to concentrate on fiscal issues, but he'll sign anti-abortion measures that reach his desk, spokeswoman Sherriene Jones-Sontag said.Oh 2012. You look so much like 2011.
[...]
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lance Kinzer, an Olathe Republican, said he and fellow abortion opponents will push for a proposed "conscience" act to supplement a law saying no person can be required to participate in an abortion. Previous versions declared that health care professionals can't be punished by their employers for refusing to participate in abortions or dispensing abortion-inducing drugs and "artificial" birth control.
[...]
Kinzer also is promoting legislation to add to the state's general ban on taxpayer funded abortion by declaring that companies or groups can't get tax credits or deductions against abortion-related expenditures. [...]
Pilcher-Cook [Mary, Senator R-Shawnee] said she also wants to make sure that doctors give women seeking abortions a detailed description of each potential abortion procedure, including "what it does to the unborn child."
This blogaround, and a heck of a lot of other things including life itself, are brought to you by carbon.
Cath: Carbon nanotubes create wearable sensors
Batocchio: Jon Swift Memorial Roundup 2011
Kate Harding: You are awful too. Kate's post was sparked by this piece by Rebecca Watson discussing the recent gender-based bullying of a 15-year-old girl on Reddit's atheism subreddit. [Content note: misogyny and threats of sexual violence]
Esther Choi: Private Danny Chen, and why I will never again reach out to OWS about something that matters to me. [Content note: hazing violence, suicide at the link about the eight soldiers charged in Chen's death]
Stacy Mitchell: Eaters, beware: Walmart is taking over our food system
Jorge Rivas: Finally a Rape Prevention Campaign Targeted Towards Men
Rich Barlow: Fungus Found to Be Killer of Little Brown Bats. Barlow notes that Boston University research scientist Thomas "Bat Man" Kunz is being treated for injuries sustained in a car accident. We wish him a complete and speedy recovery.
Brian Switek: The Sloth's Evolutionary Secret
Ed Yong: Parasitic fly spotted in honeybees, causes workers to abandon colonies. [Content note: post contains images and descriptions of bees and parasites]
Wynne Parry: Blame Hitchcock's Crazed Birds on Toxic Algae (via Maud Newton's Twitter feed, which appears in the far-right column on her blog. That's far-right-hand column--nothing to do with Newton could be fairly described as "far-right", fortunately.)
Leave your links in comments!
