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In the Name of Noble Freedom, No Slutty-Slut Pills For You Unless We Say So
The latest insanity in lady news comes from Arizona, where the state Senate passed a measure giving employers the power to deny prescribed birth control pills to any female employee unless she provides proof she's not using it for, umm, birth control. No, really. And it's all about freedom ie: the freedom of a few wackos to tell the rest of us how to live. Bonus: Today's Doonesbury.
“I believe we live in America. We don’t live in the Soviet Union. So government should not be telling organizations or employers to do something against their moral beliefs… My whole legislation is about our First Amendment rights and freedom of religion.” - Majority Whip Debbie Lesko, author of Arizona House Bill 2625
And from MoveOn.org:
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Show AllPop quiz! What's the difference between the female-hating religious extremists running Afghanistan and the female-hating religious extremists running America?
Hint: The ones in America have better PR...
The PR firm of Orwell, Kafka, and Dali. This is the America I feared when Reagan got elected. Was it gradual enough for you?
Some of us are convinced that this is the America that was bound to be. With its founding on the genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans is it any wonder really??
The former are 21st century religious extremists with access to sophisticated ways of repression!
At one time some westerners were horrified when there were reports of "menstrual monitors," in China who were "volunteers" monitoring the menstruation cycles of women in their neighborhood, as part of the enforcement of China's one child policy. It allowed westerners to feel superior about their "freedom", and American magazines such as "Reader's Digest" that were read widely in other countries made it a point to let everyone know why the USA was the "beacon of freedom".
"What's the difference between the female-hating religious extremists running Afghanistan and the female-hating religious extremists running America?"
The ones in Afghanistan are funded and given military support by Obama and the Democrats?
It's a lesson in the way our "two-party system" operates that the Obama P.R. team has been handed such juicy material to use against the Republicans -- and help drive from public discussion the Administration's own crimes against humanity and the U.S. Constitution. Thus we have a huge outcry over abortion and contraception for American women, while Afghan (and Yemeni and Libyan) women and children killed by drone or U.S. soldiers are simply "collateral damage."
So says one more republican idiot.
i think it is fairly obvious that the right-wing authoritarian 1% of Amereicha - and that is both "D" and "R" wings of that Party - are done fucking around, and doing a full-court press to enact all-out fascism in this country, no holds barred. Think of all the authoritarian federal and state legislation that is passing everywhere, almost weekly, now. NDAA, executive murder, drones permitted to spy on Amereichans in Amereicha airspace soon, a slew of voter suppression laws in multiple states, union-busting all over, anti-women laws like this one in state after state, new laws (can't remember the name now) to make it illegal to protest publically anymore - on and on and on and on.
I think we are approaching the end game. Welcome to the darkness.
All too true, tragically. You might want to read the following: Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline by Morris Berman.
Demonstorm, thanks for bringing those issues into the debate. As odious as I find these Republican policies, I think it's a mistake to reflexively support the Democrats and the pro-1%, anti-single payer healthcare, pro-war, pro-militarism, corporatist, neoliberal, neofascist ideologies they share with the Republicans.
Both parties use reproductive health, gay marriage and other culture wars issues to appeal to voters and create an appearance of democracy, but it is illusory.
OBAMA 2012 Nuff said.
Umm....yeah. Back under your rock, troll
NDAA... 'Nuff Said.
“I believe we live in America. We don’t live in the Soviet Union. So government should not be telling organizations or employers to do something against their moral beliefs…"
yep and a corporation is a person
Rather than working toward a society based on justice (and admittedly this may be impossible due to our bloody history which started with genocide and slavery) which would render abortion a mute point and would hold women in equal esteem as men it chooses instead to continue the repressed "Puritanism" whose bloody hypocrisy was unleashed upon Indigenous people and Quakers. Interesting is it not that these bigots love porn? They have no sense of sex as anything sacred but because they are affected by the arguably most potent drive in Life--sex, reproduction--they can only release their pent-up frustrations through perversion which also includes the blood letting of war (also compounded by the fact that male society in the west has no initiation ceremonies and war becomes their de-facto initiation). Check out: www.alternet.org/sex/154539/the_bible_belt%27s_love_affair_with_%28gay_and_straight%29_porn_/. The so called paternity tests were at least in part developed to "equalize" the fact that women, able to be impregnated by any fertile male and thus leaving any male never sure he was the father.
removed due to duplication
Where are the insurance companies in all of this. They should be outraged. Costs of pregnancy, delivery and the additional baby per family is going to cost more on their claims than the simple birth control.
Women of this country better wake up- they want us all poor, barefoot and pregnant to supply fodder for their wars, whore houses and free prison laborers.
Same place the property insurance companies are when it comes to global climate change, in La-La land...
In both cases they don't care, they'll just raise the damn premiums.
Republican Woman should be an oxymoron. I cannot fathom how any female would vote Republican.
I cannot fathom how any non-1% Amereichan can vote Democrat or Republican. But, there ya go.
Typically republicans will vote against their own benefit. They don't like themselves or others. All along the repubs have said they hate womens rights and feminists. In the early 80's I watched them fight nationally against legislation making wife beating illegal - Republican women stood up and supported that. Republicans also fought at the same time to declare that rape wasn't a real crime and women could have forced themselves closed and not been raped, so to be rape meant she wanted it and wasn't really rape. They had Repub women there supporting that too - defying logic because those women had to have known that is practically impossible.
All along, I've seen Republican all out hate for women and equality, and that includes coming from the Republican women. They apparently want to be slaves/servants like good little Christians and they're willing to force all women into it. Remember Republicans are far less likely to have a college education than Democrats. Those women are mostly unqualified to do anything but very low paying jobs and/or be a wives(their only goal since it includes financial support).
This is con servativism or "dviding all into owners and servants" as David Erdal, British evolutionary psychologist would put it.
Some of these mandatory motherhood loonies do take things a bit far. If they keep this up, Rick Insane is out for president. Also some might well see these neo cons as the "anti Christ" Henry Walllace once talked about. Between them and their president it's hard to tell who's spitting in the eye of God, man, and woman the most as Wallace might have put it.
"it's all about freedom ie: the freedom of a few wackos to tell the rest of us how to live."
CONSERVATIVE wackos, to be exact
Ah, the "Liberals" want to tell us how to live as well.
The "Conservative = Bad", "Liberal = Good" paradigm is flawed.
Actually, it's not the liberals. The repubs are trying to tell everyone how to live and trying to legislate it. The Liberals are saying live as you like unless you are forbidding others to live as they like. They they stop you from being a bigot and imposing your bigoted idiocy on others. The RW answer to that is to claim they're being repressed (from repressing others.)
Every special interest group of all political stripes claim to have the "answer" on how everyone else should live in regards to a particular issue. The "Right" way of doing things is subjective and depends on your perspective. The commonalities between all these groups (both right and left) is that they want to change people's behaviour and impose their own vision upon the population. Don't eat meat, don't let gays marry, don't spank your children, don't allow abortion, ban smoking, ban drugs, ban prostitution, anti-this, pro-that... It's all one group of people attempting to impose their world-view upon someone else.
Unless it's a corporation, in that case the right wants no rules or regulations no matter how many lives are involved.
Am I the only one who is wondering why we are seeing so many similar pieces of legislation around the country? I smell a rat, or rather ALEC, at work here. You know that "non-partisan" group, American LEGISLATIVE EXCHANGE Council? Big business and Republican state legislators meet and the legislators get their marching orders.
Look no farther than the private prison industry.
Good point about the possible involvement of ALEC!
News like this scares me. Must be alert to the possibility of someday having to flee this country since it has the potential of becoming totally fascist to women like many mid eastern religio-fascist places.
i keep thinking it may be a "when" not "if" proposition...
between global climate change and the rise of the right wing...i also wonder
where the hell to go???
If and until we create a world of peace and justice contraception is a very necessary tool to prevent unwanted/unloved children but also children who might be wanted to inhabiting a cold and callous world--but try telling this to the "freedom" loving bigots who after all would not mind having a surplus population of unwanted people to fill their increasingly profit motive driven prisons.
Yesterday I wasted a letter to the editor congratulating my local newspaper for publishing Doonesbury in the regular comic page of the paper. Today I see that they published an old repeat rather than today's strip. I am so disappointed.
Due to the limit of letters published I was unable to send one that is about the Afghanistan war and the horrible effect on the civilians and the troops who are being used as fodder and troops are killing themselves due to PTSD as much as they are being killed by the enemy. The troops probably know that the war is for the profiteers in America and the corrupt government of Afghanistan. This attack against women is a republican, corporate distraction.
Indeed and it is also a distraction from the collapsing eco-systems/climate chaos and the "recovery" of the economy that is only benefitting the 1%. Also, the war talk by these "moralists" against Iran is also a distraction. They are not pro-life in any sense of the word.
I found this to be an excellent article discussing the dual ironies of contraception versus Viagra, as 'taxpayer burdens':
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/june-carbone/how-were-all-paying-for-r_b_1346241.html
Because employers deduct their healthcare plans as a business expense, while employees do not report it as an 'income', the taxpayer (and especially, the uninsured taxpayer) subsidizes the health-plan dispensation of Viagra to people like Rush Limbaugh. The wealthier the health-plan (aka 'Cadillac plans'), the greater this subsidy. 'Cadillac plans' tax benefits to employers is a major reason drug manufacturers prefer to develop expensive drugs that don't really treat anything, instead of inexpensive drugs that actually treat something.
In contrast, contraceptive coverage, as has been noted everywhere, SAVE societal money, since its much cheaper for everyone to prevent an unwanted pregnancy than pay for an abortion or the raising of an unwanted child. So much money is saved that insurers are willing to pay for this service out of their own pocket.
But, what am I thinking? This is the country that spent a trillion dollars 'finding' WMD in Iraq. My bad.
The only reason they give Viagra to Limbaugh is so he doesn't roll out of bed in a drug induced stooper.
constitutional,
I think you mean "stupor".
A "stooper" is one who stoops, like to new lows or something.
Wait a minute...
I like your original better!
Nobody stoops lower than Rush Lintballs.
I am very offended that you're using the man's own name to make fun of him. Please use his full proper name: Drug Rush Lintball (it isn't plural).
OI! It's not about contraception.
It's not about abortion.
It's about suppressing, oppressing and destroying womens' freedom to refuse "traditional" marriage and the indentured servitude that goes with it.
Take that women, but be sure to vote republican.
I would expect this sort of thing from deep south states like Mississippi or Alabama. I guess I didn't realize that Arizona is probably worse than any of those. What a totally worthless backwash of a state!
You have to realize what Arizona has become. It's a winter nesting place for wealthy old white people. The people of color and the indigenous people there are seen solely as supportive to the needs of new landed gentry.
It wasn't when I moved here in the '70's!
Some blame it on the rich white snowbirds.
I blame it on the disproportionate percentage of the military industrial complex (Luke, DM AFBs, Ft. Huachuca Army, Yuma Marine bases included) Raytheon, Honeywell, etc. that are here in this otherwise beautiful state. It is my experience that there are very few center-or father left folks working for these employers, and everyone else seems brainwashed into believing that a democrat in the white house equals layoffs, and that goes for their representatives too. And I've heard that directly from the mouths of engineers working these great paying salaried jobs. (AND nearly everyone I know in these MIC salaried engineering jobs are working 60-70+ hours a week. Many away from their homes & families..."got to support our war fighters" is their motto. ).
Since a democrat no longer holds the governor's seat in Arizona, and 70% of the state house & senate are republican, watch how fast this state turns fascist.
Women aren't sluts just because they do what comes naturallly with their God given equipment just as men do. Sardonic is OK. But gals have the same right to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh as fellows. They have that as inalienable right. What do we really think Thomas Jeffeson meant by "pursuit of happiness"? Did he have to spell it out for all? Gee! Read between the lines. Jefferson favored a wall between all relgious organizations and the civic arena. Now why would that be among others?
The founders may not have been perfect but they were more right than those who brought slavery to this hemisphere back in the 1620s if not earlier, kept it going even up until the 1775 uprising and even wouldn't allow any of the 13 colonies to get rid of it as Jefferson said in a draft of the Declaration of Independence which failed to get the OK of the 13 colonies' assembly.
Time for a slut walk picketing of all these lawmakers! They are really beyond Neanderthal. Leave the gals alone. Whatever happened to all the lassez fair the con servatives love to preach about? Come on let's hear that sermon again! " The least government. . ." I'll take Pierre Elliot Trudeau's "The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation" over these frauds any day of the week.
If a Republican woman is an oxymoron, so is a "Harmless Hunter" and the so-called "'ethical' shot placement." You're not shooting "something" when you pull the trigger, you Cartesian morons.
Who said "Never retreat. Instead, RELOAD!" Yes, it's the Kill-ah from Wasilla!
A Republican woman, therefore, a Cartesian oxy-moron!
Rush shoots from the mouth, takes aim at women. She shoots with a rod, takes down lives.
Misozoony, the hatred of nonhuman animals, is parallel to misogyny, the hatred of women. Like misogyny, misozoony is perpetuated in religion, government, and popular culture.
This should be posted on the thread about the camera gun. Or are you a one-issue sort?
Hey, I love most of the comments here, but really, this is the new "Southern Strategy" and women are the new "negroes." What an amazingly successful way of avoiding Repug policies that have led to failed economy, failed wars, failed efforts to reach the majority of Americans who are suffering because of this insane ideology. Nothing new here, only new victims. It's all those uppity women who have screwed "America." Yeah, it's their fault!! Boy, if it wasn't (sic) for all those uppity bitches and their ovaries and uteruses, this country would be just fine.
"“I believe we live in America. We don’t live in the Soviet Union. So government should not be telling organizations or employers to do something against their moral beliefs… My whole legislation is about our First Amendment rights and freedom of religion.” - Majority Whip Debbie Lesko, author of Arizona House Bill 2625"
Am I reading this right and employer or organization can fire a worker for not being a member of their faith or following their dogma? Weren't we told when GW signed the Faith Based Iniative Bill that the organizations receiving federal funds would not engage tests of faith for employment? What about employees being forced to engage in practices outside their beliefs? Does anyone protect the employee any longer?
Has Title VII and the Equal Opportunity Act of 1964/5 been repeal?
"Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the first federal law designed to protect most U.S. employees from employment discrimination based upon that employee's (or applicant's) race, color, religion, sex, or national origin (Public Law 88-352, July 2, 1964, 78 Stat. 253, 42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000e et. seq.).
Equal employment opportunity was further enhanced when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Executive Order 11246 on September 24, 1965, created to prohibit federal contractors from discriminating against employees on the basis of race, sex, creed, religion, color, or national origin."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Employment_Opportunity_Commission
I believe most of us live in the 21 century U.S. not the Vatican or any other backward theocracy. Our government's only role is to protect the rights of it's citizens and average citizens have rights as much as churchs and corporations. In fact I'd say more since we pay taxes and they don't.