Admissions & Records

thepoliticalfreakshow:

Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton (D) has vetoed an anti-abortion bill that would have required a doctor to be present for a woman to take the abortion-inducing drug RU-486, effectively banning “tele-med” abortions and disproportionately affecting women in rural communities. Dayton wrote in his veto letter that patient safety should always be a concern, but “a veto is warranted on legislation because it is driven by a specific political ideology rather than a broad-based concern for protecting all patients.”

Indeed, during debate about the legislation, a Democratic state senator asked why RU-486 should be regulated instead of erectile dysfunction medication. Sen. Paul Gazelka (R), the bill’s sponsor, said Viagra is a “wonderful drug” that “helps create life.” RH Reality Check’s Robin Marty asked Gazelka to clarify his comments about Viagra, and he said in response:

comparing Viagra to RU-486 was comparing apples and oranges or more like comparing life and death. Viagra is a wonderful medical advancement in that can help couples with sexual disfunction issues…it can even help in producing life. RU486 always destroys life by taking the life of the unborn child.

Gazelka did not respond to Marty’s questions about whether he would sponsor a bill to collect information about men who are prescribed Viagra, similar to “databases created in various other states to gather information on women who obtain abortions.”

Gazelka’s bill and his ensuing comments about Viagra highlight the unfair burden placed on women who seek abortions and related health care. State regulations continue to add additional hurdles women must overcome to access abortions and contraception, while no similar measures block the availably of Viagra for men.

thepoliticalfreakshow:

Republicans love to act like tough guys. Yet it’s the Democrat in the White House who got bin Laden—and the GOP that’s throwing a temper tantrum about a modest Obama ad.

It couldn’t be more hilarious, watching these Republicans rend their garments over the Obama administration’s bin Laden video. Imaging the paroxysms we’d have been forced to endure if George W. Bush had iced the dreaded one is all we need to do to understand how hypocritical it all is. But what obviously gets under Republicans’ skin is not the fact of this video’s existence, but the fact that Barack Obama got him and they didn’t, which destroys their assumption of the past decade that they are “the 9/11 party.” And more than that—and this is the real story here—it’s the fact that the Democrats don’t appear to be afraid of the Republicans anymore. That, to Republicans, is what’s truly unacceptable.

Have you watched the video? Well, click the link and do so. It’s hardly capital P political. It’s about how the president is all alone when making such decisions. Bill Clinton provides the narration—a gentlemanly gesture, I thought, since Obama hasn’t always ladled great praise in Bill’s direction. It’s a clever validation, so that it’s not Obama himself or some hired-hand voice-over bragging on the exploit, but one of the few living other men who has occupied that office.

The allegedly controversial turn is taken when the video starts to mount the argument that if Mitt Romney had been president, bin Laden would still be busy keeping those four wives satisfied. The 2007 Romney quote invoked in the ad went: “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.” It’s supposed to be outrageous, or something, that the video used only that quote and makes no reference to some clarifying remarks Romney made later that year.

So this is the new standard for political ads—that if a politician said something about Topic X and an ad quotes it, that’s no longer good enough? Suddenly it’s only acceptable if the ad makers scour the record for everything the candidate said and then take care to ensure that the full measure of the candidate’s views is fairly represented? Okay. Let’s hold Romney’s campaign and American Crossroads and all the rest of them to that standard this fall. By the way, what Romney said one month after the initial comments was this: “We’ll move everything to get him. But I don’t want to buy into the Democratic pitch that this is all about one person … It’s more than Osama bin Laden. But he is going to pay, and he will die.” To the folks atFox News the Obama ad was under some mystical obligation to note this instance of ass-covering.

Newsweek’s Daniel Klaidman reminds us that al-Qaeda’s mastermind, Ayman al-Zawahiri is still very much alive.

Which Romney undertook, incidentally, after he was attacked by John McCain for not being sufficiently hawkish on the bin Laden question. Today, of course, McCain is up there excoriating the president who was sufficiently hawkish on bin Laden. Allegedly it’s hypocritical of Obama because Hillary Clinton ran an ad that mentioned bin Laden in 2008, and the Obama people complained about it. OK, McCain has a point there. It was stupid of the Obama people to whine about that in 2008. If McCain had stopped there, fine. But he also said, “Shame on Barack Obama for diminishing the memory of September 11.”

Republicans will try to intimidate the president into not mentioning how he got bin Laden—because they know it hurts them and makes them look like the incompetents they are.

Oh, please. See, it works like this. The rule is: Only Republicans are allowed to even mention September 11. Because it happened on their watch, you see. In a rational world, that would count as a demerit—and indeed might have led to George W. Bush’s removal from office, or at least to far more strenuous demands that he offer proof that he took that August 6 PDB seriously. But in the “Americaland” parallel-universe amusement-park ride the GOP took us all on over the past decade, it actually registers a plus, because it gives them the right to speak about how it felt to be in charge on that awful day, how hideously unknowable the burden was, etc. They own, so they believe, the stories, the images, the pain. So they’re allowed to speak for America on the subject in a way they believe Democrats are not.

Given this context, it really grates their cheese that Obama, of all people, is the one who has earned the right to boast about killing bin Laden. Bush had seven years. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, no stone would be unturned in the search, he vowed. A mere few months later, Bush was “truly not that concerned about him.” This was one of the most jaw-dropping things I’ve ever heard a president say. Imagine if Roosevelt had said that in the spring of 1942 about Admiral Yamamoto. Or indeed, imagine if Obama had come into office saying that. He’d have been … I guess I’m not allowed to say crucified, but something close to that. Instead, Obama did the opposite. He actually was concerned about where bin Laden was, and he did the brave thing that Bush notably and demonstrably failed to do.

And that accomplishment has reversed the so-called natural order of things. For Republicans, 9/11 politics are supposed to be permanently frozen in mid-2002, with Democrats shivering like Proust under the bedcovers as all the manly Republican men (Five-deferments Cheney and the rest) explained to America that Saddam Hussein was an immediate threat and that anyone who didn’t agree with this assertion hated freedom. They knew all this, you understand, because they were in office on the fateful day, which gave them “credibility” on these matters.

Between now and November, the Republicans will try to do two things re bin Laden. They’ll try to say it wasn’t that big a deal. “Even Jimmy Carter,” Mitt Romney said yesterday, would have issued the order. Why “even” Jimmy Carter? Carter actually did issue a very risky order, and even though it went the wrong way on him, the evidence tells us that of course he would have. Bill Clinton also tried to get him, but missed him by a couple of hours. So the president to question on this score is Bush.

And second, they’ll wail about 9/11 whenever Democrats do mention bin Laden. They will do this not because Republicans have dedicated themselves to preserving the memory of 9/11. Rather, they’ll do it in an effort to intimidate Democrats into not mentioning it—because they know it hurts them and makes them look like the incompetents they are. Well it’s not 2002, and Democrats should be afraid no longer.

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radicalsocialworker:

How Alternatives Are Built

Many of us are increasingly building a conversation in queer and trans and other activist spaces about what personal practices of wealth redistribution might look like. This conversation addresses a range of topics. People are talking about consumer practices: how can we assess what kinds of desires constitute needs in a culture permeated with advertising that tells us to base our self-worth on what we possess? High-tech gadgets designed to constantly distract and entertain us and also extend our work hours are rolled out weekly, wrapped in promises that we can all be smarter, more popular, and more efficient—how do we resist the message to buy, buy, buy?

We are also talking about practice related to risk and vulnerability. In a culture with a decreasing safety net, there is enormous fear-based pressure to save for retirement, unemployment, disability, children, and other life changes. A system that individualizes risk encourages people to look out for themselves alone and steel themselves against harm, knowing that they may face vulnerability alone. What kinds of structures would our communities need to put in place together so that we could trust that we would be cared for and that hoarding does not make the world safer for us? How can our queer and trans histories with caring for loved ones with AIDS, supporting youth abandoned by their families, and supporting queer and trans elders offer models?

We are also talking about giving away money. For some of us, that is about becoming monthly sustainers of grassroots organizations that focus on racial and economic justice, giving $20 or $100 or $1,000 a month from our paychecks. For others, it is about breaking the taboo of talking about trust funds and inheritances, facing off with family members who are terrified by the idea of a child or grandchild who is refusing their birthright wealth out of a recognition that the inheritance system sustains wealth disparity and that all wealth is stolen. People often need significant community support to take those steps, just as we do when we come out as queer or trans.

These and other conversations are vitally important—but not because we  naïvely believe they are all that is required to end wealth and poverty. The systemic conditions that produce capitalism and its violence are not going to be resolved just by my monthly donations or by someone else giving away a trust fund. However, these practices are also not separate from systemic change. They are about building resources for our resistance movements, and they are about doing the difficult emotional work of examining internalized capitalism. We know that the personal is political, both because material realities are composed of our collective practices, and because broad-based transformation often emerges from experiments taken up at the local level.

In 2008, Tyrone Boucher and I started a blog called Enough (enoughenough.org) that aims to create a space for cross-class dialogue about the personal politics of wealth redistribution. Contributors have shared their experiences and experiments, ranging from choosing to sell a house at below-market value to prevent gentrification, to throwing dinner parties aimed at building this conversation within a social scene, to confronting family about plans to give away inherited wealth. Many contributors have been inspired by the work of Resource Generation, an organization that works with young people with wealth on these issues, and its book, Classified, which is an excellent resource. To see examples of the emerging queer and trans racial and economic justice work, check out the Audre Lorde Project (alp.org), FIERCE! (fiercenyc.org), the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (srlp.org), and Queers for Economic Justice (q4ej.org).

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watchout-thatbowtie:

Why is there such a taboo around menstruation and feminine products? It is no secret what happens to women every 28 days. Why do we feel the need to keep it a secret or use extreme caution to be discreet? It’s a natural thing that half our population does regularly. Men shave their faces and women…

I dunno…I’ve met some beardy ladies in my day…. ;)

thedailyechoblog:

In an interview with The Guardian Last week, Google co-founder Sergey Brin referred to Facebook, Apple, Iran, and China as the new ‘Axis Of Evil’ in the war on information technology. Brin claims that there are “…very powerful forces…lined up against the open Internet on all sides and…