Inspired by Shaker RedPandamonium: What was the last personal eureka moment you had?
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
HA HA did I say WORST thing? I mean the BEST thing!
Bill Bennett: Republicans Lost the Culture War. Do me a favor, Shakers: If you don't know who Bill Bennett is, which you probably don't if you're younger than 35 and don't have a fetish for irrelevance, read some Wiki background on this insufferable nightmare to get a sense of who he is before you delve into the CNN piece. It will make it so much more enjoyable.
Everything about it is perfect, obviously, but this is definitely my favorite part:
This was the drumbeat of the Obama campaign. To women they said: Republicans are waging a "war on women," trying to outlaw abortion and contraception and would take them back to their rights in the 1950s. To minorities they said: Republicans are anti-government services, cold-blooded individualists, and cannot represent minority communities. To middle and low income Americans they said: Republicans are the party of the rich, who will slash taxes for only the richest Americans and cut social safety nets for the poor.HAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA
Rather than offer a broad sweeping vision for the country, Democrats played identity politics.
HA!
Petraeus and Benghazi Stuff
I am not even doing a news round-up today on Petraeus, because the news, such as it is, is getting increasingly silly, misogynist, and policey.
I am also not going to write about John McCain and Lindsey Graham, those shameless old shitbirds, attacking Susan Rice on the Benghazi attacks in Libya. There may be legitimate criticisms to be made about the administration's handling of Benghazi, but it's virtually impossible to extricate them from the amount of mud conservatives are splattering all over anything in sight, hoping some will stick.
These two stories are an indication of the ugliness to come during President Obama's second term. It will just be an incessant cacophony of hyperbolic caterwauling from conservatives, which will not only serve to obstruct the President's agenda, but also serve to distract from valid criticisms of that agenda.
I am trying to imagine Bill Clinton's second term in the age of the internet, and I am suddenly overcome with involuntarily shudders of grim dread.
Anyway. Talk about L'Affaire Petraeus and Benghazi here, or media coverage of either/both, or whatever. Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.
Top Five
Here is your topic: Top Five Worst Television Theme Songs. For the record, we can all take this one as a gimme. Go!
Please feel welcome to share stories about why your Top Five picks are what they are, though a straight-up list is fine, too. Please refrain from negatively auditing other people's lists, because judgment discourages participation.
In The News
News and Important Stuff:
An Idaho scientist plans to float a blimp over Idaho in search of the mythic, ape-like Bigfoot.
Related: There's a high likelihood that hairs recovered during a state-sponsored expedition in a southern Siberian cave came from a yeti.
The incoming House is more diverse on the Dem's side. Much less so on the GOP side. Surprise.
Also: This is a neat map of what red states actually look like.
Check out this trailer for new Sam Raimi-directed Oz the Great and Powerful starring James Franco.
Here is an interview with author Wilum Pugmire.
Glenn Beck's new novel sounds great!
Quote of the Day
"Let's for a moment honor it as a legitimate question—although it's quite offensive, but you don't realize it I guess. The fact is that everything that I have done in my almost decade now of leadership is to elect younger and newer people to the Congress. In my own personal experience it was very important for me to elect young women. I came to Congress when my youngest child Alexandra was a senior in high school and practically on her way to college. I knew that my male colleagues had come when they were 30. They had a jump on me because they didn't have to—children to stay home. Now, I did what I wanted to do; I was blessed to have that opportunity to sequentially raise my family and then come to Congress. But I wanted women to be here in greater numbers at an earlier age so that their seniority would start to account much sooner. ... No, the answer is no."—House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, responding to a question during a press conference today, posed by media nepotism posterboy Luke Russert, on whether Pelosi feels like she shouldn't step aside to allow for younger leadership in Congress.
Now Luke Russert knows what it feels like to get a major media job handed to him right out of college AND what it feels like to get his ass handed to him by an "old lady."
Russert, to Pelosi, who is standing at a podium surrounded by many female members of Congress, most of whom are older women: —colleagues privately say that your decision to stay on prohibits the party from having a younger leadership and hurts the party in the long term. What's your response?
[So much grumbling dissension from the women onstage. Some of them shout: "Discrimination!"]
Pelosi: [laughs mirthlessly] Next! Next!
[The female reps mutter and shout: "Age discrimination!" and "Boo!" and "Wow!"]
Pelosi: Oh, you've always asked that question—except to Mitch McConnell!
[Pelosi chortles and there is scattered applause; mumbles of agreement.]
Russert, in a shitty tone: No, but, excuse me, you, Mr. Hoyer, Mr. Clyburn—you're all over 70. Is your decision to stay on prohibiting younger leadership from moving forward?
[So many groans from the women onstage.]
Pelosi: So you're suggesting that everybody step aside?
Russert: No, I'm simply saying that to delay younger leadership from moving forward in the House— [crosstalk]
Pelosi: I think that you'll see—and, let's for a moment honor it as a legitimate question, [laughter] although it's quite offensive, but you don't realize it, I guess. The fact is that everything that I have done in my almost decade now of leadership is to elect younger and newer people to the Congress. In my own personal experience, it was very important for me to elect young women. I came to Congress when my youngest child Alexandra was a senior in high school and practically on her way to college. I knew that my male colleagues had come when they were 30. They had a jump on me because they didn't have to—children to stay home. Now, I did what I wanted to do; I was blessed to have that opportunity to sequentially raise my family and then come to Congress. But I wanted women to be here in greater numbers at an earlier age so that their seniority would start to account much sooner.
And it wasn't confined to women, though. I—we wanted to keep bringing in younger people, and some of the decisions that we made over the years to invest, when we won the House in 2006 and in races before and since, was to encourage people to come, and when they come here, to give them opportunity to serve. So I don't have any concern about that.
And as I've always said to you: You've got to take off of that 14 years for me because I was home raising a family, getting the best experience of all in diplomacy, interpersonal skills. [she laughs; people applaud]
[Russert tries to interject]
Pelosi, leaning forward over the podium, sternly: No, the answer is no. [laughs]
Tweet of the Day
(Actually two days ago, but I didn't see it until yesterday and forgot to post it until today. H/T to Jess.)
BREAKING: White House officially responds to secession petitions at whitehouse.gov: twitter.com/BoloBoffin/sta…
— Joseph Nobles (@BoloBoffin) November 13, 2012
[The image in the tweet is the image of President Obama taken while he was phone-banking before Election Day and making a whoopsface after getting a wrong number.]
Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by veggie burgers.
Recommended Reading:
Tara: Wisconsin Lawmakers Seek to Arrest Officials Who Implement Obamacare
Morgan: Stand Up and Be Counted
Marcy: The Sexy-Time Exception to Retaining Classified Information
Susana: Terry Pratchett to Leave Discworld in His Daughter's Hands
Frederick: Lee Atwater Breaks Down the GOP "Southern Strategy" in 1981 [Content Note: The post at this link contains racist slurs discussion of racism.]
Shannon: I Once Was Obese. And Now I'm Not. Please Don't Applaud Me for Losing the Weight. [Content Note: The piece at this link contains diet talk; discussion of fat bias and disordered eating.]
Peter: The Climate Change Compendium: Tracking Our Planetary Calamity in Real Time
Sean: Top Ten Amazing Higgs Boson Facts!
Ariel: A Crowdfunding Primer: Feminist Media Producers Engage a Community of Backers
Jorge: Infographic: How White Is the New Fall 2012 TV Season?
Mustang Bobby: Now You Know
And Pete Wells' review of Guy Fieri's new restaurant is pretty amazing. [CN for one instance of disablist language.] Enjoy!
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Random Nerd Nostalgia: 70s TV Comics!
[Image description: a comic book page advertisement for Saturday morning cartoons. "Watch out readers! A new star is rising in the DC galaxy of greatness! We've shocked you with our super-star heroes! Now we're going to thrill you again! With the--DC SERIES! -SHAZAM! A collapsing schoolhouse... a mystic mystery in Egypt... The world's wickedest villain out to destroy America and Captain Marvel. Even with the Mighty Isis making a guest appearance, can our hero survive? ISIS! Springing from the pages of Captain Marvel into her own mag-- and into deadly danger from the sinister scarab! Will Andrea Thomas' secret be revealed to the world-- and will she live long enough to find out? WELCOME BACK KOTTER! The Sweathogs are sweating it out! They're about to lose their leader! No Mr. Woodman hasn't canned Kotter--he's quitting! Will James Buchanan High ever be the same? SUPER-FRIENDS! Super-heroes have super-helpers--but so do the super villains! Five furious foes--backed by a sinister second team. But there's a greater danger still-- a threat within the Hall of Justice!" Information follows about when these issues will be available.]
So, the Welcome Back, Kotter comic was A Thing. Discuss. (Or not!)
Two Facts
1. If you do not actually give a flying fuck about my opinion about what my life should look like, my right to self-governance over that life, and my choices to make sure my life is what I want it to be as much as that is within my control, then you are not, in fact, pro-life.
2. Life is valuable because it has meaning to the people living it. If you take that away from me by trying to impose your idea of what my life should be in place of my own, you are not, in fact, pro-life.
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
[Content Note: The lyrics of this song include storytelling about surviving violent racism and misogyny.]
Nina Simone, "Four Women."
Her Name Was Savita Halappanavar
by Jessica Luther. Crossposted from KYBOOMU. Follow Jessica on Twitter.
[Content Note: Reproductive coercion; death.]
Her name was Savita Halappanavar.
She was 31.
She was a dentist.
Her husband was Praveen Halappanavar, 34, an engineer at Boston Scientific.
She was 17 weeks pregnant in Galway, Ireland.
She presented with back pain at University Hospital Galway on October 21st, was found to be miscarrying.
She asked several times over a three-day period that her pregnancy be terminated.
This was refused because the foetal heartbeat was still present and the doctors told her, "this is a Catholic country."
She spent a further 2½ days "in agony" until the foetal heartbeat stopped.
She died of septicaemia a few days later.
Mr. Halappanavar took his wife's body home on Thursday, November 1st, where she was cremated and laid to rest on November 3rd.
There are now two investigations are under way into her death.
* * *
This is the Galway Pro-choice statement on her death.
* * *
According to the World Health Organization, 26.1 million people seek unsafe abortions every year in the world because they do not have access to safe ones. 47,000 die from those unsafe abortions.
I have been unable to find a stat of how many people, like Savita Halappanavar, die because they are denied abortion as a medical option.
* * *
Her name was Savita Halappanavar.
So many people will die in situations similar to hers and we will never know their names.
This is unacceptable. It is morally bankrupt. It is the definition of tragic.
Her name was Savita Halappanavar.
What Happens to Turnaways?
[Content Note: Reproductive coercion.]
Over at io9, Annalee Newitz has a great piece on a new study that investigated what happens to turnaways—women who are denied abortions. Although there have been lots of discredited claims about what happens to women who get abortions—mental illness, trauma and shame, breast cancer—there has been precious little research about what happens to women want abortions but can't access them. [NB: Not only women need access to abortion, but I am using the term advisedly here because other people with uteri have not been studied, although it is probably safe to assume the outcomes would be very similar.]
The new longitudinal study, which was done by public health researchers at the UC San Francisco group Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), "reveals what happens to their economic position, health, and relationship status after seeking an abortion and being denied it."
[ANSIRH] used data from 956 women who sought abortions at 30 different abortion clinics around the U.S. 182 of them were turned away. The researchers, led by Diana Greene Foster, followed and did intensive interviews with these women, who ran the gamut of abortion experiences. Some obtained abortions easily, for some it was a struggle to get them, and some were denied abortions because their pregnancies had lasted a few days beyond the gestational limits of their local clinics. Two weeks ago, the research group presented what they'd learned after two years of the planned five-year, longitudinal "Turnaway Study" at the recent American Public Health Association conference in San Francisco.Their discoveries will not surprise anyone who has a passing acquaintance with the realities of reproductive healthcare: Women who are forced to carry to term pregnancies they do not want are more likely to face a greater health risk from giving birth, more likely to stay or end up in poverty, and more likely to stay in a relationship with an abusive partner.
Annalee:
If you look at all this data together, a new picture emerges of abortion and how the state might want to handle it. To prevent women from having to rely on public assistance, abortions should be made more widely available. In addition, there is strong evidence that making abortions available will allow women to be healthier, with brighter economic outlooks. By turning women away when they seek abortions, we risk keeping both women and their children in poverty — and, possibly, in harm's way from domestic violence.State-sanctioned reproductive coercion has demonstrable negative consequences for women. We need to fundamentally change our national conversation about abortion in this country to center that fact, so anti-choicers (and their Oh So Eminently Reasonable abettors) cannot continue to get away with framing abortion as a simple difference of opinion.
Further, every time someone who identifies as "pro-life" defends their inherently violent position on the basis that they value "the sanctity of human life," by which they mean the potential life of fetuses, we need to vigorously challenge why it is they do not appear to believe that women's lives, bodies, and free will are not sacred.
Because denying women bodily agency, increasing their risk of harm, consigning them to poverty, and forcing them to be dependent on abusive partners does not suggest evidence of an unyielding belief in the sanctity of women's lives.
That is, in fact, the opposite of a respect for life, if the definition of "life" is to have any meaning at all.
[H/T to @silveraspen.]
Commenting Policy
Please take a moment and refamiliarize yourself with Shakesville's Commenting Policy. These are not suggestions. These are the guidelines for participation in this community.
* * *
Required Reading Before Commenting: Everything in the Feminism 101 section, all links below, and "My Vote. Mine." Please also familiarize yourself with Shakesville's Email Policy.
Culture: This is an advanced feminist space. We don't do newbie education on demand here, and we don't do flamewars with people who treat discussion of progressive feminist ideals as an abstract academic exercise or want to play "devil's advocate." If you have a question, ask it in the daily Open Thread, with the hope but not expectation that someone will be around who has the time and inclination to answer it and engage in discussion with you.
Participation here requires that you respect and remember that this space is built and its content authored by individual people. In a space dedicated to social justice, we believe it is important to center the humanity of both its users and its architects.
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Commenters are also asked to make a similar good faith effort to note potentially troubling or triggering content in comments, as has become community habit.
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We expect more.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker Mirta_S: "What makes you unique or different or weird? Do you celebrate it or hide it?"
Number of the Day
45: The number of awesome photos of President Barack Obama's greatest expressions, collected here. (I know it says 44, but trust me.)
They are all amazing, but you know I love me some Presidential nose-wrinkle.
[H/T to Shaker Constant Comment.]
USPSFU
[Content Note: Harassment; misogyny.]
I hate our mail carrier SO MUCH.
I don't genuinely hate people very often, but I hate this guy.
He smokes cigars in the mail truck, so all of our mail smells like cigar smoke. Now, I don't much care if my bills and catalogs smell like cigar smoke, but if I order a gift for someone or a piece of clothing for myself or Iain, I don't love having to air it out to get rid of stink when it's brand new.
Which would be bad enough.
But he also screams at me if I don't empty the mailbox for a day or two. I have explained to him, several times, that I have a disability that can make even walking to the mailbox difficult. He responds, at best, by sneering at me. Once, as he was putting mail in the box, because it wasn't even full so who fucking cares, he started screaming at the end of my driveway about what a fat bitch I am.
Which would also be bad enough.
But he also loathes and fears dogs. That is not unusual, but he has now been to our door bringing packages like ten thousand times over the last few years, and he knows they are friendly dogs. They don't jump on him or bark or do anything but sniff at him curiously, no less menace him. They're just there.
Still, okay, I get it, if it's a phobia, it doesn't matter if my dogs are nice.
So, despite the fact that he has never once said to me, "Hey, you know, I'm not a fan of dogs, so can you make sure your dogs are away before you open the door?" but has instead snarled, "Keep your fucking dogs away from me," I have tried to accommodate him.
The way our house is laid out, there's nowhere to quickly put the dogs away, so I call them to the kitchen for a treat. That takes about 30 seconds. If I take that 30 seconds, he LEAVES, even though I say I'll be just a minute.
And if I don't take the time to put them in the kitchen, they come to the door with me, and he screams at them and at me. He has literally screamed at me while I'm standing there apologizing for my perfectly behaved dogs.
Which is what just happened not a half hour ago, when he came to the front door. I went to the door after he knocked, and I told the dogs, "Back. Wait." and held up my hands. We are literally on the other side of the door at this point. He can see me through the window. He can see me trying to get the dogs to wait so they don't get near him. AND HE RINGS THE FUCKING DOORBELL AND POUNDS ON THE DOOR.
So the dogs run to the door. And I say, "Back. Wait." Loud enough for him to hear. "Just a second!" AND HE POUNDS ON THE FUCKING DOOR AGAIN.
I open the door then, because he clearly wants me just to open the door. And Zelda steps out on the porch beside him. Not hyper. Not touching him. Just next to him. And he yells at me, "GET IT AWAY!"
It took every ounce of my willpower not to scream at him. I just took the package, said to Zelda, "Come here, good girl," and then closed the door behind her and he glowered at me.
Every time he comes to the door, this happens. And every time he comes to the door, I get more anxious.
Because no matter what, he always seems to find some reason to bully me. Funny, that.
Recently, when the dogs peered out to greet the weekend mail carrier, I began my usual, "Oh my god, I'm so sorry," as she bent down to snorgle them. She told me not to apologize. "They're so lovely!" she said, burying her face in Zelda's coat.
"Ah, it's just a reflex," I said. "Our weekday carrier yells at me about them all the time."
She narrowed her eyes. "He is one mean dude," she said. "Really scary. I'm sorry you have to deal with him."
So his coworkers know what he's like, and they're scared of him. Presumably, his bosses then also know what he's like, and they're probably scared of him, too. Which makes me pretty reluctant to report him.
Since, ya know, he knows where I live.
[Note: I am not soliciting advice. I know what my options are, and I'm weighing them.]
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