Sorry about the crude language, apparently it is acceptable these days, based on three days’ worth of Rush Limbaugh beating up on a woman studying to be an attorney at a major American university.  I’ve been posting calls to action against Limbaugh at my Facebook page for those same three days: boycott his sponsors, ask Republican legislators to chastise him, etc.

Rachel Maddow did a segment on Limbaugh last night. Her analysis was not predicting that he would be silenced. She said that the owners of the radio network that distributes Limbaugh pay him to be outrageous, and that the only way to get Limbaugh off of the airwaves was one station at a time, and targeting local sponsors. There aren’t enough activists in the world to go city by city, local sponsor by local sponsor in an effort to get rid of the creep. Some sponsors may pull their ads, given the current firestorm, but Limbaugh will be around to continue making outrageous statements. Think about it—he’s gotten more publicity over the past few days than he has in the past few years.

Maddow also took the time to educate him about how birth control works; pointing out that he was stupid in addition to being mean. Evidently Rush doesn’t know that female birth control is a medicine that is prescribed by doctors and is taken once a day, not every time a woman has sex. He must be confusing birth control with the Viagra he needs in order to perform. She recycled a man-cave bit that included diagrams of how birth control works that was originally broadcast in order to explain to Mitt Romney how Personhood amendments would ban hormonal birth control. During a Q & A session in Iowa, Mitt didn’t seem to know that hormonal birth control works by making the uterine reject fertilized eggs. If Personhood starts at conception, hormonal birth control would be banned by virtue of the science it deploys. Women in Mississippi knew that, but it seems the current crop of GOP presidential candidates is clueless.

Here’s what I have to say: Keep your damn small government out of my bedroom and my vagina. And stop sending ignorant fools to congress who think that the religious freedom of wealthy business owners trumps the religious freedom of the middle class and poor people who work for them. The U.S. Constitution guarantees that all American citizens will enjoy religious freedom, not just the privileged few, not just fundamentalist Christians, not just Medieval Catholic Bishops.

Stop sending ignorant fools to congress who believe ideology over science. Stop sending ignorant fools to congress who think people with college educations are snobs and elitists. American jobs already require educations and skills beyond those taught in high school. People who want to work in the future need to do union apprenticeships, or go to community colleges, or colleges or universities. People who don’t want that for America’s kids are killing their and our future.

Homework

Maddow Story

I had been hearing rumblings about Santorum making a strong showing in Colorado, and it turns out the rumblings were accurate. I remember thinking that Santorum could really connect with people after his speech in Iowa. Given the continuing strength of the Tea Party in Colorado, I’m not surprised that he took Colorado.

This election season has been way too much fun! Last night Santorum cleaned Romney’s clock in three states. I’m sure that Romney will now hit the accelerator on his move to the right. There will be a whole month of no primary contests to check the speed and direction, and the media will telegraph his every move.  The Newt will be moving to the right also, since he is convinced he is destined to be President.

The Komen experience with Planned Parenthood didn’t teach these guys anything. They still think that the loudest voices in the GOP are representative of voters in the general election. But the loudest voices are the fundamentalist Christians in a nation that is increasingly becoming more like Europe, where Church is not a weekly thing and does not dominate the thinking of the people. And then there are those pesky birth control and women’s health issues.

The Catholic Church is going to continue to raise a stink about birth control, and both the media and the GOP candidates are going to listen to them. Why anyone would put a lot of credence in a bunch of guys who hang out mostly with other guys and dress in medieval white, red and black robes while continuing to get caught up in scandals involving sex with altar boys is beyond my comprehension. For sure their own female parishioners are ignoring them when it comes to women’s health, as are many of their nuns.

Santorum, as the latest Anybody-But-Romney candidate, is going to get a lot more media attention, now. His war on birth control will become more widely known, and he will start to fall in the polls. None of the current crop of Republicans seems to remember that Ken Buck was defeated in Colorado because of his war on women. They have even forgotten the recent loss of a Personhood amendment in conservative Mississippi.

Homework

Atheism America Religious Right

Internet

The people who love the wildness of the internet won a major battle this week, forcing legislators to rethink their approach to protecting the piracy of music and movies. The power of the internet was demonstrated to these legislators when Wikipedia and Google, just to name two, shut down their sites in protest. The resulting response from internet users was bipartisan and swift, as was the official reaction. This story isn’t over. Megaupload, a site that allows customers to store videos and photos in the clouds was shut down in an international criminal investigation. See the story linked below.

GOP Primary Race

There were about a billion more GOP debates, none of which I watched. I’m glad the Democrats have a sane candidate to run for President. Those in the GOP primaries are all loony tunes material.

There is Romney, who was the front runner until a day or two ago. But this week he learned that he didn’t really win the Iowa Caucus, that people don’t like candidates who abuse dogs, and that during times of high unemployment it isn’t a good thing to mention that $300,000 in income, ten times the average annual income of voters in the primary state, is a small percentage of your total annual income.

Newt got to play the race card and yell at the elitist media when they dared to question his character. Even though he isn’t holier than thou he got to sound like he was, and now a Southern state that still flies the Confederate Flag is poised to anoint him as the winner in their primary.

Perry the Barracuda dropped out of the race when it became apparent that he couldn’t effectively run with his foot in his mouth. In one final move, he threw all six of his supporters into the waiting arms of his previous rival.

After former drop-out Herman Cain resurfaced as a white man with a show on the Comedy network , my guy, Huntsman, dropped out.  Presumably he didn’t want to have results showing him losing to a joke.

Women’s Rights

Women won a round when Kathleen Sibelius announced that religious groups couldn’t discriminate against women who want to practice birth control.

Homework

Megaupload Shut Down

Bloomberg Discusses All the Fun in South Carolina

Framing Discrimination as Religious Freedom

In 2010 every politician ran on a plank of “Jobs Now.” I know I did, I have the T-shirt to prove it. But since the electoral winners were sworn in, and took their seats in legislatures, both in states and in Washington, what we’ve seen is a GOP war on women’s rights.

The most recent attack comes in the form of H.R.358, which was passed in the U.S. House, but will fail in the U.S. Senate. HR358 represents the seventh anti-abortion bill passed in the U.S. House this year. I swear when male legislators think about women’s rights, they think with their little head instead of their big head.

Or maybe they really do think that keeping women barefoot and pregnant, or letting women die because of complications of pregnancy somehow crates jobs. Do they think if there are fewer women in the workplace there are more jobs available for men?

Right now the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats, is the first line of defense for women’s rights. We also have a champion in the White House. Upon passage of HR358, the White House issued this statement: “The Administration strongly opposes H.R. 358 because, as previously stated in the Statement of Administration Policy on H.R.3, the legislation intrudes on women's reproductive freedom and access to health care and unnecessarily restricts the private insurance choices that women and their families have today.”

In an interesting development, Mitt Romney was confronted by an Iowa voter yesterday who asked him why he wanted to ban birth control. The look on his face was priceless when the question was posed. He was dumbstruck and confused. He says he supports birth control. But supporting the Personhood amendments floating through state legislatures would ban most forms of birth control. Rachel Maddow, on her MSNBC show last night, took Romney to her virtual man cave and explained the facts of life to him. Birth Control prevents fertilized eggs from implanting themselves into the uterine lining of a woman. If “personhood” starts at conception, birth control will be banned.  

Homework

Let Women Die Act

Maddow's Man Cave

I’ve often said that I’ll never understand how a Republican thinks. It must be because their brains are different. Yesterday this blog was about women’s reproductive rights being under attack. It was inspired after I read a Jonathan Turley blog. I’m a fan of Jonathan Turley, even though he is a Libertarian. I frequently read his blog to see what is happening to our Constitution, since he is a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University.

I confess, it was also inspired by an E-mail that I received, which was titled “Look What the Republicans Have Done to My Country. I’ve linked to that post below. The blog lists 30 ways that Republicans have demonstrated their hatred of America, all while wrapping themselves in flags and claims of patriotism.

Today’s blog was inspired by my favorite Troll. He posted a comment to yesterday’s blog that clearly demonstrates how differently we think. This worries me. If we see the world so very differently, how can we ever find common ground to solve problems?

As I wrote my blog, I imagined a world where women did not have access to birth control pills or IUD’s or any other medically sound method of controlling pregnancies. Turley had spoken with a doctor who pointed out that the efforts of Personhood, USA—which happens to be headquartered in a town where I spent my formative years—would make most forms of birth control illegal. This attack on women’s reproductive rights has gone beyond abortion, and is now attacking pregnancy prevention of any kind.

In my mind there was a responsible young woman, not ready for motherhood, but ready to enter into a committed sexual relationship. She could have been married or single—that didn’t matter to me. What mattered to me was that she would not have access to birth control, and would have more pregnancies than she wanted. I come from a large family. I’ve seen what happens to women who have as many as 13 children because the Pope tells them not to practice any method of birth control other than rhythm. Even so, the women in my family made the choice to honor their religion. It was a CHOICE, not something mandated by government.

But what my Troll saw was a slut--A woman who was promiscuous, spreading STDs all over the planet, and getting monthly abortions because she was too stupid to protect herself from unwanted pregnancies. Kevin, my blog wasn’t about abortions, it was about BIRTH CONTROL.

I think I’m beginning to see why Republicans hate Planned Parenthood. They think that planning when a child is welcomed into this world turns women into sluts. I think it turns women into well rounded people who can achieve something with their lives. It allows a woman the ability to lift herself out of poverty by making responsible choices about her own life and womb.

P.S. Kevin, I’ll blog about Weiner when Republicans ask Vitter to resign from the Senate. In other words, when Hell freezes over.

Homework

Look What the Republicans Have Done to My Country

No, this blog isn’t about any Weiner. It is about the growing war on women’s reproductive health. There is a movement to define “Personhood.” It even has its own group of activists: Personhood USA. The Personhood website claims that it is engaged in the most important civil rights struggle of our age. That would make defining Personhood more important than discrimination against minorities in education and the workplace; more important than equal pay for equal work; more important than equal rights regardless of sexual orientation. Hogwash.

But it sounds so benign—protecting the “preborn.” Their mission is to: “serve Jesus by being an Advocate for those who can not [sic] speak for themselves, the pre-born child. We serve by starting / coordinating efforts to establish legal ‘personhood’ for pre-born children through peaceful activism, legislative efforts and ballot-access petition initiatives.” Personhood USA is homegrown in Colorado—headquartered in the town where I went to junior high and high school—Arvada.

According to libertarian law professor Jonathan Turley, the real impact of the initiatives being promoted by Personhood USA would be to ban contraceptives. By defining life as beginning at the moment that a sperm cell is introduced to an egg, regardless of its implantation into the uterus, we enter a whole new level of sexual Puritanism. Only about half of all fertilized eggs actually result in a pregnancy, yet this definition of “Personhood” would make even unviable fertilized eggs persons. This goes way beyond trying to ban abortion; it would ban things like birth control pills and IUDs.

Ladies, forget about a career. If you engage in sex at all, you are going to be spending your life barefoot and pregnant because even your unviable fertilized eggs have more rights than you do. Forget about moving up the corporate ladder, you are stuck in poverty. And don’t expect any help with food for those kids. The Republican war on women includes eliminating any nutritional support for moms and kids. Maybe you can send the kids to the store to steal a loaf of bread, leading them into a life of crime. At least they’ll get three meals and a cot if they are behind bars.

Accroding to Sir Issac Newton’s third law of physics, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The reaction to Personhood USA is Ibis Reproductive Health. Their mission is : “to improve women’s reproductive autonomy, choices and health worldwide…by conducting original clinical and social science research, leveraging existing research, producing educational resources,  and promoting policies and practices that sexual and reproductive rights and health.”

Ibis Reproductive Health is predicting that the 2012 elections could depend on the reproductive health of women in America. Forget about ObamaCare, let’s give the fetus the right to vote. (Just in case you didn’t recognize it, that was sarcasm.)

Homework

Personhood USA

Jonathan Turley's Blog

Ibis Reproductive Health

Mike Pence, a Senator from Indiana has been attacking Planned Parenthood at least since 2007. Every year he tries to get all funding to the organization banned. This year is no different. He has written a bill to block Planned Parenthood, and only Planned Parenthood, from receiving any funding from Title X.

Title X is the only federal program that provides funding for family planning. Since 1976 there has been a federal ban on funding for abortions, with a few very limited exceptions. Because of that ban, Title X primarily funds access to birth control for low income families. There are approximately 4,500 community based clinics who receive Title X funding. Planned Parenthood operates many, but not all, of these clinics.

The government website for Title X says: “Title X-supported clinics provide a number of related preventive health services such as: patient education and counseling; breast and pelvic examinations; breast and cervical cancer screening according to nationally recognized standards of care; sexually transmitted disease (STD) and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) prevention education, counseling, testing and referral; and pregnancy diagnosis and counseling. By law, Title X funds may not be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning.”

Planned Parenthood receives about a third of all Title X funding, and performs about a fourth of all U.S. abortions. Planned Parenthood is nationally recognized as a source of information for members of both sexes who want to prevent pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases or AIDS. The abortions provided in some locations are funded by individual donations to the organization. None of the money for abortion related serves comes from the Federal government, or from the State government in Colorado.

That doesn’t stop abortion foes from trying desperately to get rid of Planned Parenthood. For a long time I’ve said that banning abortion is a slippery slope leading to a ban on birth control. Young women rarely believe this because they have always lived in a world where a full range of reproductive health services are available. But, back in 1916, there was no “pill” and women could neither vote nor divorce. Margaret Sanger, decided to do something about that, and opened, in Brooklyn, the first birth control clinic in America. Later that clinic became part of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

This latest attack on Planned Parenthood includes a video making the rounds in right-wing internet circles. It is reminiscent of the video attack on ACORN—they both have prostitutes and pimps; they both are staged; they both are heavily edited; they both are false. ACORN lost their fight for survival. We can’t afford to let Planned Parenthood lose. Why not send a donation RIGHT NOW to your local chapter? When you are done with that, call your congressional representatives in Washington and tell them what you think about keeping a full range of reproductive health care available to all women. Maybe send a thank you note to Dianna DeGette for the work she is doing…

Homework

The War on Planned Parenthood

Denver's Diana DeGette Leads the Charge to Save Planned Parenthood

About Title X

Planned Parenthood Federation of America

Biography of Margaret Sanger

KJCT8 Covers Planned Parenthood

List of Local Centers & Services Provided

Planned Parenthood and ACORN videos

When Scott Tipton was recently in Grand Junction, he met with a group of Republican Women and bragged about voting to repeal the health insurance reform bill. They seemed to think it was a good idea, but I’ll bet that none of them had ever read the bill, let alone a good analysis of it.

This is personal for me. I am a diabetic, and in May will be forced to find my own insurance, as the insurance through my employer will run out. That’s a pre-existing condition. Insurance companies will no longer be able to refuse to insure me because I have diabetes. The State of Colorado is in the process of setting up insurance exchanges that were mandated by the health insurance reform bill. I’ll be able to shop for insurance on the exchange, where competition and a requirement that 80% of all premium dollars must go toward health care instead of administration and CEO bonuses.

If my mother weren’t on Medicare, it would be personal for her too. She is a breast cancer survivor who had a mastectomy years ago. Yesterday she was diagnosed, once again, with breast cancer in the other breast. Instead of a mastectomy, this time she’ll be getting a lumpectomy. Believe it or not, she was more distressed at the prospect of another mastectomy than she was at the “C” word. Technology has improved a lot since she last faced cancer. Her sister is a survivor of stage 4 breast cancer. She knows what to expect.

It should be personal for young women, too. Women used to have to pay more for insurance than men did, because it was presumed they would cost more through multiple pregnancies. Also Viagra was covered, but birth control was not. The health insurance reform bill makes it easier for women to access the reproductive health care they need. But the party of small government is still insisting that women should not have access to even private insurance that covers abortion. If a women gets pregnant, they want her to deliver a baby, regardless of her health, the health of the fetus, or the circumstances of conception. That is putting big government into the bedroom of every woman in America. You can’t be in favor of small government and be in favor of government intrusion into the most private decisions a woman makes. The two are mutually exclusive.

Homework

GOP Distortions About Health Care

Lymph Nodes & Breast Cancer

New Rules for Pre-Existing Conditions

Colorado Working on Insurance Exchanges

Abortion Debate in Washington DC

Health Care Reform and Birth Control