delphipsmith: (ba headdesk)
Because news. Mostly this, but also everything that the Orange Hobgoblin says or does, because it highlights how incredibly incompetent and stupid he is. (Just look at all the tags I've applied to this post -- I couldn't stop, they are my frenzy made visible.)

So instead, I give you the peaceful February view out our back windows yesterday:

(click to embiggen)
delphipsmith: (waka waka bang splat)
Paul McCartney and the Boss are playing their warbles, and the millicents cut them off in the middle of their finale?? Tsk, tsk, tsk. And one of them a Sir, too! Turning the lights and zvook off on a Knight seems right oozhassny. Somebody owes somebody an appy polly loggy.

Ed.: If you've never read A Clockwork Orange you might need this...
delphipsmith: (seriously pissed)
Yet another legislative body embarks on a shameful and incomprehensible endeavor to seize control of every uterus in their state, and not even let women talk about it. Seriously, what IS it with you people?? And I ask this in all sincerity, because it really does baffle me. (For "baffle" read "annoy the f**k out of".)

Wil Wheaton has issued some satirical and amusing tweets on the topic, however. Best ones:

Wil Wheaton ‏@wilw: My goodness, @MIHouseGOP! I encountered a woman who was not in the kitchen. I was so horrified, I dropped my monocle, for Pete's sake!

Wil Wheaton ‏@wilw: A woman I know was all, "I have an opinion about my reproductive health." How do I get her to cut that out? Help me, @MIHouseGOP! #vagina

All things considered, today seems a good day to share this:

delphipsmith: (seriously pissed)
Arizona has passed a bill stating that life begins two weeks before conception.

::iz speechless::

Presumably that means everyone in Arizona will soon be singing this.

Also passed: a law protecting doctors from being sued if they withhold information that might lead a woman to get an abortion. Now, I'm fairly certain that's malpractice and violates every medical code of ethics since Hippocrates. I can't wait to hear what the AMA has to say about it. Ideally they will vow to yank the license of any so-called physician who perpetrates this obscenity on a patient.

Gaaaaaaaaahh. And the GOP says there's no war on women. Uh-huh. Pull this one and it plays Jingle Bells. Becoming a rabid feminazi is becoming a more and more attractive option every day that insanity like this sees the light of day.
delphipsmith: (seriously pissed)
A proposed law in Arizona would apparently allow ANY employer, not just religious-affiliated institutions, to deny contraception coverage and possibly even fire female workers for using birth control pills for a "non-medical" purpose. The Republican-backed (oooh, color ME surprised) HB 2625 bill would allow bosses to ask female employees whether they are using contraception and request proof they are using the pills for non-sexual reasons, if the employer is morally or ethically or religiously opposed to...well, to sex, I guess. It doesn't mention any exemption if you're married, meaning it can't be premarital sex they object to, so it must just be sex in general. WTF???

I really don't understand what's going on around here. How can anyone not think this is absolutely nuts? And why can't the GOP go back to focusing on the economy and leave all this moral stuff to people's individual consciences???

There's more here and here, if you can stomach it.
delphipsmith: (much rejoicing)
Am enormously pleased that Doonesbury is tackling Virginia's ultrasound law. As usual, some papers have gotten queasy and are shifting it to the editorial page or even not running it at all (COWARDS!!). If your paper's running it, you can thank them here; if not, you can shame them here. And of course you can read the strips here.

More good news: the New York Times reports (surprise, surprise) that centrist women are fleeing the GOP. Full article is here but in short:

In Iowa, one of the crucial battlegrounds in the coming presidential election, and in other states, dozens of interviews in recent weeks have found that moderate Republican and independent women — one of the most important electoral swing groups — are disenchanted by the Republican focus on social issues like contraception and abortion in an election that, until recently, had been mostly dominated by the economy.

And in what appears to be an abrupt shift, some Republican-leaning women...said they might switch sides and vote for Mr. Obama — if they turn out to vote at all.

Music to my ears :)
delphipsmith: (at Tara in this fateful hour)
So, National Women's Day. Following close upon months of battles over birth control, access to abortion and family planning, Virginia's sonogram law (which very nearly became medical rape but as signed is both ultimately pointless and laughably hypocritical), and Rush Limbaugh calling Sandra Flukes a slut and a prostitute and demanding sex tapes of her. The New York Times ran a front-page story today on women in Texas losing health care options. The article makes no mention of National Women's Day but still, I hope they chose it on purpose to make a point.

On balance, I find that National Women's Day has depressed more than empowered me. I feel as though a horde of filthy rodents are nibbling away with their diseased grimy teeth at my right to self-determination. These rights that sensible and intelligent men and women of the past 200 years fought for and won -- I thought everyone today recognized them as simple justice and common sense. I didn't realize we were taking them for granted, I thought we'd just grown beyond that particular brand of idiocy.

Well, let's all remember this when we go to vote. Butt the fuck out, conservatives. Go focus on business and leave morality to the individual.

Shout-outs to: Olympe de Gouges, Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Margaret Sanger, Lucretia Mott, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Victoria Woodhull, and all fellow travelers. Your torches still burn.
delphipsmith: (seriously pissed)
Update: Lawmakers drop support for PIPA/SOPA - yay!

If you hadn't heard of SOPA or PIPA before today, I'm sure you have now. Major sites like Google, Reddit, Wikipedia and many other smaller sites have "gone dark" today to bring attention to these two potentially dangerous and web-stifling proposals. While piracy is a real problem, this sort of vague and over-reaching legislation is emphatically NOT NOT NOT the answer.

Read more, take action, help keep the internet free and wide open :)

Wikipedia blackout info
What is SOPA?
SOPA 101
Why SOPA And Protect IP Are Bad, Bad Ideas
How SOPA would affect you
Take action!
delphipsmith: (seriously pissed)
"We maintain that a woman possessing an adequate knowledge of her reproductive functions is the best judge of the time and conditions under which her child should be brought into the world. We further maintain that it is her right, regardless of all other considerations, to determine whether she shall bear children or not, and how many children she shall bear if she chooses to become a mother.
-- Margaret Sanger"

What is wrong with these people that they want the government entirely out of regulating food safety and the EPA, but they want the government all up in one's knickers about who one marries and when/if one has children???
delphipsmith: (seriously pissed)
Originally posted by [livejournal.com profile] gabrielleabelle at Mississippi Personhood Amendment
Okay, so I don't usually do this, but this is an issue near and dear to me and this is getting very little no attention in the mainstream media.

Mississippi is voting on November 8th on whether to pass Amendment 26, the "Personhood Amendment". This amendment would grant fertilized eggs and fetuses personhood status.

Putting aside the contentious issue of abortion, this would effectively outlaw birth control and criminalize women who have miscarriages. This is not a good thing.

Jackson Women's Health Organization is the only place women can get abortions in the entire state, and they are trying to launch a grassroots movement against this amendment. This doesn't just apply to Mississippi, though, as Personhood USA, the group that introduced this amendment, is trying to introduce identical amendments in all 50 states.

What's more, in Mississippi, this amendment is expected to pass. It even has Mississippi Democrats, including the Attorney General, Jim Hood, backing it.

The reason I'm posting this here is because I made a meager donation to the Jackson Women's Health Organization this morning, and I received a personal email back hours later - on a Sunday - thanking me and noting that I'm one of the first "outside" people to contribute.

So if you sometimes pass on political action because you figure that enough other people will do something to make a difference, make an exception on this one. My RSS reader is near silent on this amendment. I only found out about it through a feminist blog. The mainstream media is not reporting on it.

If there is ever a time to donate or send a letter in protest, this would be it.

What to do?

- Read up on it. Wake Up, Mississippi is the home of the grassroots effort to fight this amendment. Daily Kos also has a thorough story on it.

- If you can afford it, you can donate at the site's link.

- You can contact the Democratic National Committee to see why more of our representatives aren't speaking out against this.

- Like this Facebook page to help spread awareness.

delphipsmith: (South Park kids)
Am completely disgusted by the Democrats caving in to pressure and allowing the evisceration of the reproductive health piece of the health care reform bill passed last night.

"Earlier, the House passed an amendment to pending health care legislation that prohibits federal funds for abortion services in the public option and in the insurance "exchange" the bill would create."

Great. So now not only are the women in our military denied a choice, so will be anyone opting for (or forced into) the public option, or who shops through this "exchange" (whatever THAT is). For anyone interested in objecting, Planned Parenthood has a petition/form letter here.

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