sexgenderbody

mark my words: the GOP think they’ve got it made now that Obama can’t run again

I’ll tell you exactly how these bubbleheads are gonna go on this.  they got beat by a black guy and as much as they despise him and everything about him, they see Hillary Clinton as the next in line - and they’ve been preparing to beat her for twenty years.

it’s what they thought would happen in 2008 and that’s what they’re gonna prep for now.  they’re still convinced that people  just need to be lied to better and that they can beat Hillary because they believe that angry white men really hate women.

guaranteed, they’ll try the same shit we just saw but substitute sexism for racism and they are convinced they are a lock for the white house.

watch for the anti-Hillary talk to start as they start their poisoned well campaign.  my guess is that they start to anchor the words “Benghazi” and “Hillary”.  they were too focused on using it against Obama in the campaign, but now they will talk about Hillary and Benghazi in any mention of either.

I’m not Hillary’s biggest fan, but I’ll still vote for her.

these GOP asshats are gonna have to fail again for it to make it into their checkbooks skulls.

the GOP is counting on dismissing Hillary and stealing their white country back.

Republicans love freedom, and by ‘freedom’ they mean ‘white people’.

[from The Bucking Jenny] An Open Letter to Candidate Romney:

(via The Bucking Jenny) I love this so much!  I’m reading everything she wrote - ever!

Dear Candidate Romney,

I saw you.  I saw your video.

I saw you speaking candidly and off the cuff about me.  Don’t get me wrong, I know that you didn’t mention me by name or anything, but we both know you were talking about me.

When you were talking of 47% of the population that is never going to vote for you because we are dependent victims who lazily live on government programs like food stamps, I can’t help but take personal offense.  In fact, once you decided to lump in in anybody who is never going to vote for you, you weren’t just talking about me, but many people I love, and about 90% of the people I know.

My children eat because of food stamps, Mr. Romney.  Now sir, I want you to picture a Wyoming cowgirl, a mother, a fighter, a righteous, determined, god loving woman; a Rocky Mountain Grizzly Bear Mamma that would make Sarah Palin’s makeup wearing pit bull shudder.  Picture me staring you in the eyes as I ask you, “What business have you got talking about me and mine like that?”

I am watching you run your Richie-rich mouth on TV right now, with your little flag lapel pin over your heart.  You brag that you will bring “12 million new jobs and rising take home pay.”  Quite frankly, I have no reason to believe you or your failures in arithmetic.  Even if you did manage such a feat, I’d point to the 4.5 million job head start you had thanks to President Obama saving the nation from the failed GOP policies you use as a platform, which nearly caused a second great depression.

You said that you think that 47% of Americans “think they are victims” and you even said it wasn’t your job to worry about us. 

First, I must argue you.  I am not a victim.  I have been beaten.  I have been bullied.  I have been raped.  I have been addicted.  I have been alone.  I have been poor.  I have been homeless.  I have been sick and broken.  I have chosen each and every single time to stand up and pull myself and my family out of those circumstances.  I beat every one of them without any riches to aid me.  I did that without any inheritance, any gifted stocks or bonds, any loans, any rich family, or any elevators for my cars.  I did it because, I am not a victim.  I am an American.  I am the Mom in Chief of my house and nothing less than the very best that I can provide will do.  I am the product of women who forded rivers to fetch the mail after working a hard day’s labor on the Laramie high plains.  I am a force to be reckoned with.

If you don’t believe me, you could ask the doctor who has to take fluid from my spine on a regular basis to preserve my ability to see due to a rare disease.  If you don’t believe me you can ask our Ambassador to China, Gary Locke, who personally invited me to a bill signing when I helped Washington State legislate protection for children in schools against bullying by sharing my own experiences.  If you don’t believe me, you can ask my children who have seen me struggle but always, always, provide for them.  Any one of these people will tell you, that this American is not a victim.

You call me entitled.  I devote every day of my life to bettering the planet I live in with no hope of profit.  I am sorry sir, but you calling me entitled is like the pot calling the dove black.  That isn’t going to work.  I challenge you to stand at my side and let the American public judge, which of us is entitled.  I spend every dime of mine and my husband’s earned income as quickly as it comes in, right here in my town.  Every dime I earn and spend stays in America.  I am the ultimate in job creator.  Who are you to challenge me?

You call me entitled.  Every year on April 15^th I am certain that I have shown every cent that went through my pocket honestly.  I dream of a day when I am well enough off to pay taxes.  I fantasize of the flourish with which I will write my first check to the IRS.  I would give any earthly belonging I have to be self-sufficient enough to be able to pay it forward to the society that I love.    No, you cannot challenge me Mitt Romney.  I challenge you- where are your tax returns?

I fought, I graduated at the top of my class in college, and I pursued graduate studies.  I took loans against myself, believing that this would pay off, but then in 2009 something happened. 

No, it wasn’t Barack Obama’s inauguration; it was a sudden injury to my spine that ended up revealing not one but two severe spinal diseases. .  Since then I have been unable to finish my studies or work.  I’d like to know, Mr. Romney; how many months of physical therapy, how many of my surgeries, how many of my scars must I share to prove my devotion to wanting to be better?  How many of my efforts must I submit before you’ll see me, an American Citizen, as worthy of your worry?  When you tell me to take responsibility for myself, I ask you, what after that?

This evening, when you justified your awful video, you said that you had said what you did because you were reassuring your donators that you could win this election.  I’m sorry that you have to pander to your base like that.  You seem to have sold out your soul.  You have forgotten the eye of the needle with that wealth you’ve got.  You’ve left behind Matthew 24:50.  I hate to be the one to tell ya buddy but -you are not the promised one.  The promised one understands that the 47% that you are talking about, they’re more than low wage workers and elderly people who worked their whole lives and paid into the system, they are the 100% that your God is concerned with when he said “Love thy neighbor.”  You may pay a tithe with your wallet, but it’s obvious you’ve neglected to tithe your heart.

My husband left for work at 7 am.  It is now 9 pm and he won’t be home again for two more hours from his second job today.  I spent yesterday at the emergency room; I have been waiting for two years for social security.  I do not understand.  How much more do we have to work to show you that your call for jobs isn’t enough?  You must also be concerned for the whole nation, and whether we eat, and whether we have medicine.  You must care if a hardworking, devoted family like mine is unable to survive after investing their best efforts.  How many jobs do you expect every American to take?  3?  4?

You simply must stop and consider those you dismiss as beneath you or you cannot be our leader.  It is an unwritten but widely understood rule of the presidency.  I don’t know what they taught you, when you were out there scalping businesses hard won on the backs of people like that 47% you so rudely kick around, but in the real world – we care when Americans suffer.  We care when you forget the young men and women who serve our nation by sacrificing their lives.  We care when Americans go hungry.  We care when Americans jobs are sent overseas and rich men hide societal resources in offshore accounts.  We care that we are being ripped off, even if you find profit and power in our suffering, we still exist, we still care, and we will still stand up.

See?  You called me a victim, you called me entitled, you called me a lot of other things in that video, but on every count - you are wrong.  Just by writing you this letter, I’ve proven I am not your victim.  Just by living my life of hard and dutiful effort I have proven that I am not entitled.  In fact, I consider it a duty as a citizen of this Great United States to shout loudly and proudly - “Mitt Romney is not and never will be my president!”

I warn you Mr. Romney, the one thing that I have not, and will not ever lose, is my voice.  I will sound it each and every one of these 50 days until Barack Obama is reelected, we will vote with Compassion and Wisdom, and Empathy and you sir, can keep your spite and your hate and your rhetoric and see your way out.

Sincerely, Sarah Zacharias aka The Bucking Jenny

~For more of my work please be sure to check my blog, my Facebook Page, my Twitter Feed, and my publication archives at OpenSalon.com and AddictingInfo.org.  Also, the days are counting down, click here to register to vote in your area.  The Bucking Jenny proudly supports Obama/Biden 2012.

Enough Is Enough: The Latest South Dakota Attack on Women’s Access to Abortion Goes Too Far

(via ACLU on DailyKos)

By Brigitte Amiri, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, and
Robert Doody, Executive Director, ACLU of South  Dakota

Recently, an extreme bill sailed through the South  Dakota legislature, which places unprecedented restrictions on access to abortion care.  This bill requires women to wait 72 hours between the first counseling session with the doctor and the abortion; it also requires women to first visit “crisis pregnancy centers,” entities that are notorious for providing false and misleading information; and requires doctors to tell the woman of any possible risk factor published in medical and psychological journals since 1972. These new restrictions are on top of the long list of abortion restrictions in South  Dakota, and they also come from a state that tried to ban abortion outright twice in the last few years. These new attempts to restrict abortion are outrageous attempts to deny women basic health care services, and to shame and humiliate them. Enough is enough.

Nowhere else in the country have we seen these extreme measures. For example, although the Supreme Court has allowed states to force women to wait 24 hours between counseling and the abortion, never has a state enacted a law that requires her to wait 72 hours. And nowhere else in the country has a state mandated that a woman first visit a “crisis pregnancy center” or “CPC.” CPCs often lack licensed medical personnel, and are designed solely to “encourage” a woman to carry to term and keep her child. The federal government has documented that CPCs often provide women false and misleading information in order to achieve their goals.  Furthermore, these new restrictions require physicians to tell their patients about risk factors from all journals that date back to 1972, nevermind that the information in those journals may be outdated, misleading, and irrelevant.

So what does this mean for women in South Dakota? Have you looked at the geography of South Dakota? It’s a big state. And there are very few doctors who provide abortions. And the way the law reads, a woman needs to see her doctor twice before the abortion procedure. Imagine you lived at the top of the state, far north of Sioux Falls. You’d first have to get to the physician in Sioux Falls, be counseled by the doctor, and listen to a litany of “risk factors” some of which may have nothing to do with you or may be so outdated that they aren’t even accurate. And then what? Drive all the way back home, only to turn around and make that same drive a couple of days later (assuming you have a car), only to do this all a total of three times? And what about taking time off from work? And child care? And on top of it all, in between the counseling session and the abortion, you have to visit a CPC and listen to speeches about the horrors of abortion, and receive misinformation such as abortion causes breast cancer and infertility.

And what if you had a wanted pregnancy, but tragically discovered that the pregnancy was doomed? Or what if you were pregnant as a result of rape or incest? All of these new requirements would apply to you too.  This is because the legislature thinks it knows what is best for women. The South  Dakota legislature specifically said that this bill is necessary “to protect the pregnant mother’s interest in her relationship with her child and her health by passing remedial legislation.” Wow.  It’s like we’ve gone back in time about a century when women were treated like children, unable to make decisions for themselves.

These outrageous and extreme measures push the envelope to the detriment of women’s access to basic health care, and they are really designed to make them feel horrible for making a decision that may in fact be the best one for themselves and their families.

Of course, South Dakota is not alone in attempting to deny reproductive health care to women, and to humiliate them and shame them — are you watching what is going on in Congress and across the country? My colleagues have blogged about these issues here and here and here. This South Dakota bill is one attack on women in a long line of them. Enough is enough. These assaults on women’s health care must be stopped.