Shit that Pissed me Off – 2/26

John Kasich, the “Moderate” Republican, Just Defunded Planned Parenthood in Ohio

The bill he signed didn’t specifically defund Planned Parenthood. No. That would be too obvious.

It just said public funds will not go to any provider of health services that also provides abortions.  Like – you know – Planned Parenthood.

Don’t worry, though!  The funds that are no longer going to Planned Parenthood (and other abortion providers but mostly Planned Parenthood) will now go to other clinics that provide health services for women, HIV testing, and other services that Planned Parenthood was doing a great job providing.

Republicans like to say that they support women’s health (as John Oliver pointed out this week), but it really feels like it is “the health of women who choose not to terminate their pregnancy.”

You, young lady, are welcome to all the medical assistance you can afford! Because we aren’t going to pay for it. That’s socialism.

Because if you want to terminate a pregnancy for any reason, your health no longer seems to be a concern. The hate focused squarely on Planned Parenthood (but really it isn’t just Planned Parenthood guys) has everything to do with demonizing an organization that has the balls to perform a legal medical procedure without being ashamed about it.

So while Kasich tries to convince you that he’s a moderate, just remember that he hates Planned Parenthood (seriously – it’s not just Planned Parenthood) just as much as the next Republican Presidential candidate.

He also understands Planned Parenthood just as much as the next Republican Presidential candidate.

Georgia Passes Religious Discrimination Freedom Bill

In a bill designed to make sure that people don’t have to bake cakes for gays if they don’t want to, Georgia has passed a non-discrimination bill that allows people to discriminate. The bill allows any company – up to and including taxpayer funded nonprofits – to refuse services to GLBT clients due to deeply held religious beliefs.

Right wing Christians want the right to be assholes legally because otherwise they just couldn’t live with themselves.  It was so much easier when they were just working to deny right to a certain set of people.

Now that they feel they don’t have the right to treat that subset of people like shit, they figure they need to come up with special laws so they can do it again and better.

Apparently, god demands they treat homosexuals badly.  God demands that they are open about their disdain for a “lifestyle choice” because god is a grade A asshole.  If the Supreme Court doesn’t understand that, they are just going to have to pass laws to make sure they can live according to their asshole god’s decree.

And then they can take the remainder of the day to freak out about Sharia law.

In Utah, a Lawmaker Wants to Ignore the Supreme Court

Yeah, this is just one fringe yahoo but he’s a hell of a fringe yahoo.  Not content to simply legalize discrimination, he wants to tell the Supreme Court that he’s happy to listen to them until they make a ruling he doesn’t like.

Then his whole state will go Maverick on those activist mother fuckers!

By “go Maverick,” I mean “engage in strangely homoerotic banter with other pilots.”

I mean, they won’t.  Because they understand that you don’t just get to ignore the Supreme Court when it suits your particular moral point of view.  Unless you want to secede.  And that didn’t turn out so well the last time someone tried it.

Senate Republicans Won’t Even Hold Hearings for a Supreme Court Nominee

The bullshit rallying cry of the Republicans is “let the people decide because we don’t like the decision they made three years ago!”

The other bullshit rallying cry is “Democrats did something similar once so whose the asshole, huh?”

To answer the second point – all of you!

Somebody needs to stop the cycle, Senate Republicans.  And while it isn’t true that Democrats have ever refused to hold confirmation hearings for a supreme court nominee, it is true that Democrats have blocked judicial nominations.  Or at least they have threatened doing so.

And here is the problem with the entire political system.

People are so fucking concerned with winning, they aren’t going to do their jobs.

If Obama was a Republican, there would be no talk of letting the people decide.  If the Senate was controlled by Democrats, we’d probably already have a new justice.

I’m a liberal.  And I want to see a liberal bias on the Supreme court because it will help LGBT rights, abortion rights, and limit corporate power.  That’s important to me.

But it isn’t so important that I believe the Democrats should have any more right to block a Supreme Court nominee than Republicans.

So to conservative friends who tell me “X” from the Democratic party did/said/wanted to do the same thing, I respond “OK – don’t justify a wrong thing to me by pointing out when someone from my side also did a wrong thing.”

Instead, how about we all work together to stop the fucking wrong thing?

Hey!  Another Meme that Pissed me Off

I’m not even going to go into all the reasons this meme is wrong.  Because there are just too many ways this set of five condescending points are off the mark.  Mostly they just assume Bernie supporters are fucking idiots who don’t understand how Socialism works.

Instead, I’m going to point to the fact this was written by the “comical conservative.”

Look, buddy, I don’t want to tell you how to do your job but this isn’t funny.  I mean, there isn’t even a punchline.  If you are going to go online and call yourself a comedian, you gotta work harder than this.

Seems to me, you are just a conservative and you think saying anything bad about the left is funny.

You are missing a lot of low hanging fruit.  Have you looked at Bernie Sanders’ hair?  I mean, the dude has spent as much time on his hair in the last twenty years as Donald Trump has spent in the last six days!

And hey, do you know what Bernie Sanders voters really don’t understand?  Caucuses!  Because most of them have never been to one before!  Amirite?

Seriously, buddy.  Just drop the “comical” thing from your name.  It’s embarrassing.

In Illinois, Lawmakers Want to Prevent Babies from Getting a Birth Certificate Without a Dad

This is another one of those bills that will never get out of committee but let’s ask ourselves an important question: what the fuck is a bill like this doing ever getting into committee?

Don’t lawmakers have important shit to do?

This misogynistic as fuck bill states that the mother either needs to name the father or she will not be eligible for state assistance.  It pre supposes that the welfare queen myth is true for every single woman who has a baby.

As always, the major objection is rape and incest, for which there is no exception.  That’s truly awful.

And yet it once again misses the point that a bill like this should not exist at all.

There are hundreds of reasons this kind of bill, which I should reiterate is sexist as fuck, shouldn’t exist.  Nobody should be happy that anyone would introduce this bill anywhere.

It isn’t about making fathers responsible.  It is about making single mothers ashamed that they chose to have a child.

Women really can’t win, can they?  If they choose to have an abortion, they are murderers.  If they choose to have a child, they are leeches on society.

Another Meme that Pissed me Off

Two in one week?  What is going on with the world???

Oh A Voice For Men,* how you manage to completely miss the fucking point.

You see – if a woman throws a baby in a dumpster, she is going to be sent to jail.  Other women aren’t going to defend her and say that “it doesn’t really count as throwing a baby in a dumpster because she was too drunk to know what she was doing.”

Nor is she likely to have a whole bunch of people stand up for her if she happens to be an athlete.  There will be no cries that the accusation of throwing a baby in a dumpster will “ruin her life.”

Moreover, the victim in the example you choose is the baby.  And to carry your example further, what you are actually saying is “those babies were asking to be thrown into a dumpster – it wasn’t the fault of the woman who threw them.”

When women (and men) say we need to educate boys, what they mean is we have to teach boys that rape is wrong.  It is not about assuming that boys will rape women.  Rather, it is about creating an environment where boys will stop other boys from raping women.

Because – and this may come as something of a surprise to you whining Voice for Me Fuckwits – peer pressure works.

*As usual, no link provided because FUCK THEM!

So hey – I’m just going to add a plea for you regular readers of my Friday blog.  I have started doing a short story blog each week.  Usually on Wednesdays.  I’m trying to be a professional playwright and I use these stories to explore ideas I might want to expand on later.  Do me a favor, if you have the time, and take a look at them.  And tell me what you think.  This week, I wrote a ghost story.