"Aspirin Between the Knees"

Foster Friess, the billionaire backer of Rick Santorum, doesn't seem to have much smarts in spite of his accumulated wealth. When speaking of the birth control issue that is frothing around, especially in Santorum's camp, this is what Friess had to say during an interview:

“Back in my day, they used Bayer Aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly,” he said Thursday on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, setting the host back for moment.

I haven't heard a phrase like that in over thirty years. My Mom said it to me just before I started having my period. What she was trying to tell me was that the best thing to do is abstain from sex before marriage. Then she told me about birth control.

The Republicans are trying their best to make the birth control health coverage issue about religious freedom. But it's not about religious freedom at all. It's about women's health. Some women need to be on birth control because of hormonal issues. Some need to be on it because they could die if they have children. The hearing today, led by Representative Issa was a farce and played for the 28% of those Americans who believe that women are incapable of making their decisions about their health. Their "expert panel" didn't have any health professionals and consisted solely of men.

It would be nice if teenagers chose to abstain from sex and that there isn't a need for birth control. The reality is that teens will have sex. Mississippi has only teaches abstinence in its schools now.

Mississippi now has the highest pregnancy rate among teens:

Mississippi, a comparatively poor state in the South, had a rate of 68.4 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 19 in 2006, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report. That marked a 13 percent increase over 2005.

And that's not all:

It has rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis among youth practically twice that of the national average.

Additionally, the Sex Information and Education Council of the U.S. reports that:

“Nearly 60 percent of Mississippi high school students report ever having had sexual intercourse compared to 47.8 percent of high school students nationwide. Moreover, teens in the state are nearly twice as likely to have engaged in sexual intercourse before the age of 13, and 50 percent more likely to have had four or more sexual partners than their peers nationwide.”

Rick Santorum, Representative Issa, most Republicans in Congress, and billionaires like Foster Friess are sadly deluded if they think people are going to us an "aspirin between the knees" or abstinence as birth control.

Rick Santorum views on sex:

Here is an actual Rick Santorum quote: “One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country.” And also, “Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that’s okay, contraception is okay. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”
...
It’s pretty basic: Rick Santorum is coming for your contraception. Any and all of it. And while he may not be alone in his opposition to non-procreative sex, he is certainly the most honest about it — as he himself acknowledged in the interview.

Rick Santorum wants to do away with all birth control because its against his religious views. Kinda of scary that this man is actually in the running for President of the United States. I mean, do you really want Rick Santorum telling you how you must live your married life and you as a couple have sex?

Breakdown - Fascism

In my post, Self-hating Jew, I linked to the 14 points of fascism. For the next few weeks, I'm going to show some of the concerns I have the direction the US is going.


1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays. How many times have you heard Republicans say liberals are not patriotic? What of the claims of American exceptionalism? I am proud of my country but think it does our country a disservice when politicians say that because I'm a liberal, I'm not a "real" American. It has been our country's liberal ideals that make us a truly great and unique nation. There have been mis-steps. The Founding Fathers allowed slavery to continue. It took a civil war to correct that injustice. Women were long denied the right to vote. The flood of Jewish, Irish, and other immigrants in the late 1800's and early 1900's led to quotas on immigration. During World War II we locked Japanese citizens on the West coast. Our country performed medical testing on blacks in Tuskegee.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc. After World War II, Japanese soldiers were executed for water-boarding US soldiers. Today, in the United States, water-boarding is called "enhanced interrogation technique". When news first came out that the US was water boarding, Shepard Smith stated We are America. We don't f**king torture. Gitmo is a festering sore. We do not need Gitmo. We do not need to torture. Our laws were sufficient to deal with terrorists.


3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc. Whose the biggest bogey man in the minds of many Americans? Muslims. Do we really need to pass laws that strike at the very heart of what it means to be free? The recently passed NDAA allows any president to have the military detain and US citizen arrested on US soil detained indefinitely. This is huge, huge, huge threat to our American way of life and it was started by President George W. Bush after 9-11 and sadly and much to my dismay, was signed into law by President Obama. Oh, to be sure both President Bush and Obama stated they would never use that power. But it shouldn't be a power they had to begin with. The PATRIOT Act, passed after 9-11 is an act which needs to be abolished.

We are Americans but too many are allowing fear to jeopardize the very things that make our country great. I wrote to my congressman before the passage of the PATRIOT Act urging him to vote no its passage. I've written to my current congressmen urging them not to pass NDAA with its truly un-American detention of US citizens. I wrote to them regarding the threat to free speech that SOPA and PIPA poses. All of my congressmen let me down. President Obama let me down by signing NDAA into law. But I'm hoping more and more Americans can see the power they have. If it weren't for the internet protests last week, we would have SOPA and PIPA.

If we can stop SOPA and PIPA, we can make Congress abolish the NDAA and the PATRIOT Act.

I cannot support any of the Republican nominees for president. They are just too dangerous to our country's future. We have given up some of our freedoms out of fear. The Republican candidates message is nothing but fear and more fear. If they truly believed in American exceptionalism, why do they keep feeding us fear? Aren't we the home of the brave? It's time to give up fear.

Self-hating Jew?

Someone, an anonymous person from Littleton CO, has accused me of being a self-hating Jew because I support President Obama.

There are many reasons I support President Obama. He is not out to get Israel. He is not a Muslim. His policies on Israel are about the same as past presidents. Unlike some past presidents such as George W. Bush, he did not promise to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

All presidents from President Truman to President Obama have supported Israel. Some have offered better support than others. Both Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon both Republican, withheld timely help when Israel desperately needed it. Just look at the Yom Kippur War and contrast it with President Johnson's, a Democrat, response during the 1967 war.


I cannot support any of the current Republican candidates for president. Newt Gingrich has openly advocated jailing judges he disagrees with. Mitt Romney actually thinks that a corporation is a person. Santorum seems to want to establish a theocracy and do away with our representative democracy.

All of them seem to have a singular disregard for a actual, breathing persons individual rights. All of them seem to morbidly interested in women's reproductive rights than in looking at ways to help the unemployed. Some of them openly embrace endorsements from those that say homosexuals should be killed. Most of them show a contempt for science.

Here's a good example of Republicans in action:It's an anti-bullying law but states that a person with deeply held religious convictions can make a statement for those beliefs. The bill was aimed at gay kids who were being tormented. But it would have helped other kids who were being bullied. I guess it will be okay for those with deeply held religious beliefs to call Jewish children "christ killers" or kikes.

These Republican contenders all show a tendency toward fascism.

Just look at this:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread
domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

From Liberty Forum

The Republicans, to me, already have the first 13 points locked in. All across the nation, Republican controlled states are attempting mass voter suppression by various laws.

No, I'm not a self-hating Jew. I'm just one who remembers where great-great-great-great grandfather came from: Tulchin. I also remember a conversation I had with my Grandfather about the US. I told him we are so lucky to be living here and would never have to worry about being prosecuted because of religion. He said it could happen here and that we must be on guard. Read the above 14 points again.

Seeking Justice or Relearning How to Share

One of the very first lessons earned as a child is that it is important to share even if we didn’t like the other child very much. It was our very first lesson in seeking justice. A squabble over a child’s toy doesn’t seem like it would be such a lesson. Think about it. To me, this lesson seems to teach many things other than giving over a toy for a short time.

In thinking about the many squabbles with my brothers and sisters and other kids over toys, I think sharing toys taught me that not everyone has what I have. Compared to other families, mine was just above the poverty line and so we didn’t have what some others had. We were fortunate to have food, water, shelter, medical care, and transportation. Some kids weren’t as lucky and I used to wonder what I could do to help.

When I was a child, I was glad we had programs in place to help those in need. As an adult, I’m glad my taxes help out programs such as WIC, Medicaid, Pell Grants, etc.

Sometimes I think the United States is becoming a country in which being poor is a crime.

The Torah’s depiction of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is a cautionary tale of how not to treat the poor and needy. The prophet Ezekiel proclaims: “Behold the sin of Sodom….She and her daughters had pride, excess bread, and peaceful serenity, but she did not strengthen the hand of the poor and the needy.” Avot 5:10 in the Mishna describes as someone who has the attitude of “What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours” as a Sodomite.

Right now in Congress, Republicans are trying to pass legislation that strips many of the safety programs in place. These same Republicans want to do away with Social Security, the Department of Education, and the EPA. They want to do this on the backs of the poor and the middle class while increasing the wealth of the richest people in the country.

I believe in the essential decency of Americans. I know that most would willingly help their neighbors, friends and family in hard times. There are so many who fall through the cracks. My question is our we going to be a nation that “strengthen the hand of the poor and needy” or will be one that declares “What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is your”?

Dear Little People, A Message From the GOP

Fark.com.


Dinki 2011-02-22 09:59:42 AM
In these tough economic times, we need everyone to make a sacrifice. We need everyone to share the pain. We are all in this together, and everyone must be willing to suffer for the greater good. So we are going to make some cuts-

Poor people, we are going to cut food stamps, Medicaid, family services (including Planned parenthood), HEAP, and many if not all other programs that you use.

Teachers, social workers, Police, firemen - we will be cutting your numbers, pay and benefits.

Students (and parents of students), we will be cutting financial aid (and of course the above mentioned teachers).

Veterans, we will be cutting veteran services, health care and mental health assistance.

Disabled people, we will be cutting support services and staff used to provide those services.

Senior citizens, we will be cutting social security and Medicare, along with assisted living support and the above mentioned HEAP.

And finally, for the wealthy, we will be cutting your taxes. Everyone has to give up something in these trying times.

Signed,
The GOP

P.S. for our corporate friends, we will not just cut your taxes, but also cut many of those rules and regulations also. We appreciate your sacrifice.

Revisionism!

Ah hum, excuse me dear, but President Bush was president during 9-11 when our country suffered its worst terrorist attack:

Mary Matalin: Bush Administration Inherited.

Beck's Golden Advice

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Prescott Financial Sells Gold, Women & Sheep
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor U.S. Speedskating

More Beck and monetary musings.

Pretty nifty scheme Ingraham, Limbaugh, Beck and others have. Scare the heck out of you and then convince you to buy gold from the people who pay them as spokes persons. You might even say it's a gold mine!

Republican Purges

Would you consider this to be Stalinist, Maoist, or Nazism?

Average Americans?

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Tar and Feathers?

The Republican party has been in some sort of weird denial since losing the presidential election. Many prominent conservatives have been increasingly stating that there is something very wrong with the Republican party. They are being ostracized by their fellow Republicans. I expect some to soon be calling on Kathleen Parker not only to be ostracized but tar and feathered for the column she wrote today. She nails it for the reason so many like me fled to the Democrats after McCain chose Palin as his running mate:

It isn't that culture doesn't matter. It does. But preaching to the choir produces no converts. And shifting demographics suggest that the Republican Party -- and conservatism with it -- eventually will die out unless religion is returned to the privacy of one's heart where it belongs.

Religious conservatives become defensive at any suggestion that they've had something to do with the GOP's erosion. And, though the recent Democratic sweep can be attributed in large part to a referendum on Bush and the failing economy, three long-term trends identified by Emory University's Alan Abramowitz have been devastating to the Republican Party: increasing racial diversity, declining marriage rates and changes in religious beliefs.

It was not only Palin's lack of qualifications which drove many people away. McCain had a chance to be a real maverick and bring the Republican party closer to the center. Instead, he selected Palin as his running mate. She was not qualified and if you do a Youtube search, you can find Palin and some sort of preacher in an odd show of trying to cast out any witchy behavior.

There were so many things wrong with the idea of Palin being vice-president. If she is the Republicans nominee in the 2012 or 2016 presidential races, the death knell of the Republican party will be complete.

During McCain's campaign, we saw their campaign looking toward Joe the Plumber. It times, it seemed good ole Joe was the face of McCain's economic policy. We saw Palin talking about little pockets of what she calls 'real' America. We saw attacks on elites, liberals, and the news media. In short, they attacked everything.

McCain had a real chance to move the Republican party toward the center and away from those who want to ruin our schools by placing Intelligent Design in the curriculum. He had a real chance to move away from the perception that the Republican party is just for evangelical Christians.

If the Republicans keep choosing people such as Huckabee and Palin as leading contenders for presidential nominees, they will lose more and more to either the Democrats or a third party.

There have been many brave conservative voices, such as Kathleen Parker, speaking out about the direction the Republican party is going. I expect some like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck to start calling for Kathleen Parker to be symbolically(if not actually) to be tarred and feathered. An speaking of Glenn Beck, what exactly does he mean by "thinning out the herd"?

After listening to that exchange, this Sinclair Lewis' quote comes to mind:

"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."