Different Day, Same Shit.

- Detroit is officially bankrupt. Or at least it would be hadn't a judge ruled the city's Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing unconstitutional:

Ingham County Circuit Court Judge Rosemarie E. Aquilina issued the orders Thursday and Friday, including a temporary restraining order, in an attempt to halt the Chapter 9 filing by Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr. The judge says the bankruptcy filing “…will cause irreparable injury” to the pensioners.

“In order to rectify his unauthorized and unconstitutional actions described above,” wrote Judge Aquilina, the Governor must (1) direct the Emergency Manager to immediately withdraw the Chapter 9 petition filed on July 18, and (2) not authorize any further Chapter 9 filing which threatens to diminish or impair accrued pension benefits.”

- Fiery White House journalist and former correspondent Helen Thomas has died at the age of 92. Being a mainstay of the White House press pool through 10 presidencies is no small feat.

- A man walks into a bank and gets swindled:

(Philip L. Ramatlhware, an immigrant from Botswana) was 48 years old at the time and disabled, after being hurt in an accident as a passenger on a Greyhound bus. His English wasn’t good, he had no college education and his last job had been at a fast-food kiosk at the Philadelphia airport. In April 2008, he received $225,000 in a settlement for his injuries, part of which went to pay legal fees. He was holding the settlement check when he walked into the branch.

Immediately he was referred to a broker for a “financial consultation,” according to an arbitration claim he filed against Citigroup. The broker assured him the money would be invested in “guaranteed” funds and that he could have access to them whenever the need arose, the complaint said. Ramatlhware gave him $150,000 to invest. The broker put $5,000 into a bank certificate of deposit, bought a $133,000 variable annuity and invested the rest in a series of mutual funds.

Less than six months later, Ramatlhware had lost $40,000, according to the complaint. Citigroup settled the case in 2010 for $22,500, without admitting liability, according to a report on the case by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

- Scottie Nell Hughes, Director of the Tea Party News Network and unabashed ultra-conservative*, thinks that rape victims who abort their pregnancies should be locked up and serve the same amount of prison time as their rapists:

FUGELSANG: “Let’s say Roe v. Wade is overturned and abortion becomes illegal. If a woman is raped and she goes to a doctor, and the doctor terminates the pregnancy – Please tell me who deserves the longest jail sentence? The rapist,the doctor or the woman? In order.”

HUGHES: “Across the board.”

FUGELSANG: “All three of them?”

HUGHES: “Go for it!”

Let's just say if Scottie Nell Hughes found herself in that position, she'd find any and every excuse that makes her exempt from the above. That's just what conservatives do.

- George Zimmerman won't be getting his gun back thanks to the DOJ. However, a Florida gun store has kindly stepped in to give him another one, free of charge. Now if someone would be so kind as to give Trayvon Martin his life back...

- Rush Limbaugh doesn't think the N-word is racist anymore. Neither does David Sirota. Hans von Spakovsky, John Nolte, Ben Shapiro, Dan Riehl, Joe Walsh and Todd Starnes all think that racism is "dead" and the president is a "race baiter" of the highest order. All deserve the DDSS Award for Excellence in Rank Stupidity, lovingly crafted out of pigeon droppings, old Klansman robe cloth and discarded anti-abortion bill clippings.

By the way, if you can turn your sink faucet into a flamethrower, thank your local gas-drilling operation for giving you a neat party trick to impress friends. It's not like you actually drink tap water...

*Considering you have to be ultra-conservative for that gig, a bit of an oxymoron there.

The above is a live stream of Texas Senator Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, several hours into a filibuster of SB 5, which would, if passed, prohibit abortions by law after 20 weeks of gestation.

SB 5 is also one of the most stringent restrictions on abortions and women's reproductive health, supported by fine folks like Republican state rep Jody Laubenberg. Let's see what Jody has to say about...rape kits:

Texas Rep. Jody Laubenberg (R) sponsored several anti-abortion measures currently making their way to the Governor’s desk. Taken together, they would shut down the vast majority of the state’s women’s health clinics and criminalize abortions after 20 weeks. But in reasoning out why she did not support an exemption for rape victims in the 20-week ban, Laubenberg betrayed a woeful lack of information on the procedures a victim of rape undergoes — namely, the “rape kit,” which is used to collect data on the assailant and in no way relates to pregnancy:

When Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, called for an exemption for women who were victims of rape and incest, Rep. Jody Laubenberg, R-Parker, explained why she felt it was unnecessary.

“In the emergency room they have what’s called rape kits where a woman can get cleaned out,” she said, comparing the procedure to an abortion. “The woman had five months to make that decision, at this point we are looking at a baby that is very far along in its development.”
The remark about rape kits, which is not accurate, sparked widespread ridicule on social media sites. Laubenberg, who has difficulty debating bills, then simply rejected all proposed changes to her bill without speaking until the end of the debate.

These are the kind of folks Sen. Davis has to fight against tonight. Wish her the best of luck.

"Fetus" and "masturbation" are two words you normally wouldn't see together in a sentence. Thank the GOP for making the seemingly impossible...possible:

The House's proposed ban on late-term abortions is justified because fetuses masturbate as early as 15 weeks, proving they experience physical feeling, according to a member of the GOP Doctors Caucus.

Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), a former OB/GYN, suggested Monday that he has witnessed "movements that are purposeful" in fetuses entering the second trimester.

“Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby," Burgess said. "They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to believe that they could feel pain?”

Burgess made the comment during debate in the House Rules Committee over Rep. Trent Franks's (R-Ariz.) abortion bill, which is due for a floor vote Tuesday.

The measure would ban nearly all abortions after 22 weeks of pregnancy on the disputed premise that fetuses can feel pain at that stage of development.

According to Burgess, if a fetus entering the second trimester is capable of masturbating, then it's capable of feeling pleasure. Ergo, it's also capable of feeling pain. Therefore, it would be wrong and immoral to subject the fetus to the pain that abortion would cause.

According to research from the Journal of Maternal-Fetal and Neonatal Medicine, evidence that a fetus is capable of such stimuli is fleeting, at best:

Most endocrinological, behavioral and electrophysiological studies of fetal pain are performed in the third trimester, and they seem to agree that the fetus in the 3rd trimester can experience pain. But the presence of fetal pain in the 2nd trimester is less evident. In favor of a 2nd trimester perception of pain is the early development of spino-thalamic pathways (approximately from the 20th week), and the connections of the thalamus with the subplate (approximately from the 23rd week). Against this possibility, some authors report the immaturity of the cortex with the consequent lack of awareness, and the almost continuous state of sleep of the fetus.

Conclusions: Most studies disclose the possibility of fetal pain in the third trimester of gestation. This evidence becomes weaker before this date, though we cannot exclude its increasing presence since the beginning of the second half of the gestation.

Normally, I'd be surprised that the moral fundamentalists within the GOP aren't calling for fetuses to be fitted with tiny little anti-masturbation devices. But this is different. Convincing the public that fetuses are already going on dates with Rosy Palms is merely a means to an end, with the end being that of abortion. Baby steps, literally.

The bill, officially known as the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, passed the House 228-196 but it's destined to die an ignoble death in the Senate. President Obama promises to veto the bill and others like it if they ever come across his desk.

The irony is that while the GOP does all it can to "protect" the life of the unborn, all bets are off once the unborn become born. With massive cuts to federal education funding and the WIC program due to Sequestration and 13 GOP-led states opting out of the Affordable Care Act, seems the GOP has no interest in investing in the future of the already-born, unless there was something in it for them.

For the longest time, I wondered why conservatives, more specifically the hardcore "pro-lifers" that comprise a significant portion of the current GOP, were so hell-bent on eliminating abortion and along with it the right for a woman to have agency over her own body. I actually had a longer, more drawn out post for this one, but then I thought, "the issue might not be as complicated as I thought." As much as I hated to trash that post, I'm glad I did.

It started out with paying attention to who exactly was calling for "the right to life" and the end of abortions. The more I listened to and read about the klaxon calls, the more I saw something that was rather disturbing, but something I shouldn't have been surprised about.

I noticed the calls for respecting the sanctity of life started no sooner than the act of copulation was done but abruptly ended as soon as the baby was finally born. Then the child goes from being a blessing to being a burden and a drain or just plain forgotten about. If conservatives had this much respect for a child when it was in the womb, you'd think they'd have that same level of respect for a child out of it, or for all life, for that matter. As you can see by current GOP goals to crumble up the social safety net like so many used Dixie cups, that's not the case.

I caught the vibe the pro-life movement seemed to be specifically aimed at white Americans. There were furtive efforts to bring black Americans and Hispanics into the pro-life tent, but the movement took on a sort of urgency I couldn't put my finger on.

Then I read the demographics.

Look at the latest U.S. Census figures and U.S. population projections for 2050 and beyond. The numbers don't lie. The U.S. is getting browner and browner by the minute, and that disturbs a lot of people. That would have been the end of it if it wasn't for a black man becoming a U.S. president, signaling the crumbling of another barrier and a slow end to Anglo-Saxon hegemony when it came to positions of power. You'd be surprised at how many people were comforted over the fact that a "colored" would never become president.

The GOP's worried about demographics being the party's downfall. With few Hispanics and nearly zero black Americans backing the GOP, the party has only a certain, dwindling pool of people to rely on. It's not just the crazy 27-percent - it's the relatively uninformed swing voters who'd vote for the most convincing personality if convinced hard enough into a certain direction. 2012 is the GOP's last chance. If they don't win this now, chances are they won't be able to win for the foreseeable future.

The alarm over abortion transforms into a silent worry that too many white women are choosing not to be fruitful and fulfill their destined duty while the wrong types of people are allowed to reproduce like crazy. The underlying story is "too many blacks and browns being born and not enough whites." Racial hegemony and political posturing swaddled in a blanket of faux concern for womens' prenatal health.

I also read about the Stolen Generation, about how the Australian government took scores of aboriginal children and attempted to reshape them into something more "respectable" to Anglo-Saxon standards. The ultimate aim was to simply breed the "abo" out of them, eventually leaving people with little to no trace of their original heritage and a culture that would be inevitably distilled to monuments, trinkets and rituals performed by people who haven't a clue about the actual people who were behind it all or their culture.

The native Americans were largely slaughtered into irrelevance and attempts to breed the Negro out of Negros only succeeded in adding a dollop of "Negro blood" into the white American gene pool. Eugenics was tried but that went out of fashion, eventually. I see much of the pro-life movement as a last gasp for retaining "demographic balance" while enforcing socio-religious mores at the same time.

Finally, I read this. This is powerful. This is something that everyone should read, comments and all.

One thing the author addresses is how the "bad" women who do decide to go ahead with having their child are expected to give their children up without a second thought - no guilt, no pain, no mourning. It's assumed that these women were callous enough to not want to keep their baby in the first place - henceforth, letting go wouldn't be any problem. It would be like leaving a Dixie cup on a counter and walking away:

And why the fuck are actual babies so disposable that you're expected to get over it after a suitable period of mourning (i.e., till you get a good Christian husband) in the case of adoption? It's odd how this does not apply in the case of aborting a blastocyst, when you're expected to wall yourself into a tomb away from decent society and gnaw on the bitter bones of your own despicable evil. Bad woman. BAD.

A certain morally vindictive set of folks see pregnancy as just desserts for promiscuity. Dealing with nine months of pregnancy and childbirth is supposed to be the punishment.

Babies as punishment, at least until they're given up to a proper, respectable "Christian" family who will raise them up in the proper "Christian" way until they grow up to be mirror images of what proper society deems to be a proper, respectable person. I always thought babies were a blessing...

The Handmaid's Tale is set in the near future in the Republic of Gilead, a country formed within the borders of what was formerly the United States of America. It was founded by a racist, homophobic, male chauvinist, nativist, theocratic-organized military coup as an ideologically driven response to the pervasive ecological, physical and social degradation of the country.
Beginning with a staged terrorist attack (blamed on Islamic extremist terrorists) that kills the President and most of Congress, a movement calling itself the "Sons of Jacob" launch a revolution and suspend the United States Constitution under the pretext of restoring order.

Taking advantage of electronic banking, they were quickly able to freeze the assets of all women and other "undesirables" in the country, stripping them of their rights. The new theocratic military dictatorship, styled "The Republic of Gilead", moved quickly to consolidate its power and reorganize society along a new militarized, hierarchical, compulsorily Christian regime of Old Testament-inspired social and religious orthodoxy among its newly created social classes. In this society, almost all women are forbidden to read.

The story is presented from the point of view of a woman called Offred (a patronymic name that means "Of Fred", referring to the man she serves). The character is one of a class of individuals kept as concubines ("handmaids") for reproductive purposes by the ruling class in an era of declining births. The book is told in the first person by Offred, who describes her life during her third assignment as a handmaid, in this case to Fred (referred to as "The Commander"). If Offred fails to become pregnant on this, her third attempt, she will be declared an "unwoman" and discarded.

Interspersed in flashbacks are portions of her life from before and during the beginning of the revolution, when she finds she has lost all autonomy to her husband, through her failed attempt to escape with her husband and daughter to Canada, to her indoctrination into life as a handmaid. Through her eyes, the structure of Gilead's society is described, including the several different categories of women and their circumscribed lives in the new theocracy.

I wonder if, when Canadian author Margaret Atwood published The Handmaid's Tale back in 1985, she knew that fundamentalists would actually try to set up something similar to the theocratic hell that was the Republic of Gilead. Today, her classic dystopian novel is considered an unofficial rough draft of the kind of society today's staunch conservative Republicans would very much like to see.

The Handmaid's Tale paints an ugly picture of a nation in which the anti-abortion and anti-birth control "pro-life" movement comes to an odious, yet logical conclusion. Instead of attempting to explain in my own words the odiousness of a Gileadian existence, here's an excerpt from "Giving Birth to a 'Rapist's Child': A Discussion and Analysis of the Limited Legal Protections Afforded to Women Who Become Mothers Through Rape," written for the Georgetown Law Journal by Shauna R. Prewitt, a lawyer and a survivor of rape who - get this - had to fight off her rapist's legal attempts to obtain custody and visitation rights for the child she bore due to the rape:

Like the stranger-rape prototype, the pregnant-raped-woman prototype may have emerged and continues to persist because it reinforces social hierarchies. For example, by describing the unborn children in terms that suggest the children are exclusively extensions of the rapist fathers, proponents of the pregnant-raped-woman prototype—underpinned by the rape-product justification—reify many sexist and patriarchal ideas. Sandra Mahkorn argues that rhetoric which portrays the unborn child as “being the property of the rapist” derives from a “sexist mentality.” It is the mentality that views a woman as “merchandise to which a man can claim ownership,” such that any offspring of that relationship are viewed as “the property of the owner, the father.” As a result, through use of the pregnant-raped-woman prototype, “chauvinistic predispositions are tolerated and succumbed to.” This “property” view not only allows for the illogic that a child conceived through rape is exclusively a genetic product of the rapist father, but also “de-legitimiz[es] [the] maternal genetic link,” and thereby, “erase[s] all identity characteristics of the mother other than that as a sexual container.” In doing so, it “reifies the patriarchal notion of patrilineal descent,” as well as the sexist ideology that “promote[s] the concept that a woman is a mere receptacle.” Finally, the depiction of an unborn child as being “‘worthless’ or ‘valueless’” derives from the notion that pregnancy from rape is “symbolic of ‘damage’ to male property.”

The world of The Handmaid's Tale effectively reduces female existence to mere property and such property is utilized as tools for sexual gratification or tools for procreation and lineage continuation. To insure both functions are always available, barriers to both are brought down under religious and moral pretexts with assistance from legal and judicial avenues. Therefore, abortion, birth control and the very idea of sovereignty over one's own body are barriers that are to be brought down. Once that happens, society's menfolk, or at least those who wield considerable amounts of power, will have their theoretical pick of the female litter.

Notice how the commanders have their pick of wives, "Marthas," handmaids and of course, "Jezebels" for relief and entertainment. Women who can't serve one or the other purpose are deemed "unwomen" and essentially sent away to die. Meanwhile, the common man only has an "econowife" to look forward to. Gileadian society's "big men" get to benefit from the spoils while the foot soldiers contend with the crumbs, along with proud accolades for their service under said big men and promises of more crumbs being thrown their way in due time.

This world is one men like Rep. Todd Akin and VP candidate Paul Ryan advocate for bringing into fruition, even if they themselves don't quite know it. Many others are unwilling to just come out and admit that the bedroom and kitchen are the only places they believe women should be. Others have religious and moral objections to abortion and birth control; some people are more than willing to hitchhike their way to achieving an abortion/birth control ban, even at the cost of reducing women to living Fleshlights and incubators in the long run. Akin and other politicians are definitely willing to use the conservative pro-life movement as a slingshot to political career advancement, regardless of the consequences.

As for conservatives bent on slighting their liberal counterparts by ushering in odious legislation that further turns women into the aforementioned "handmaids," they're shooting themselves in the foot in the long run, too. And just as pro-lifers seem to cease caring about the new lives they claim to protect once they're out of the womb, the Gileadian society in The Handmaid's Tale is quick to quietly dispose of newborns born with defects and shuffle "undesirables" out of the way. Even the women who've outlived their procreative and sexual usefulness are exiled to the novel's wasteland colonies. I'm sure pro-lifers would say they would never act that way in similar circumstances, but the lack of concern for life outside of the womb tends to make their concern for life within it seem...hollow.

Unlike the novel, there's no natural disaster or crisis needed to start slouching towards Gilead. All it takes is a few people convinced that women would have better lives as property than they would as full-fledged human beings, and scores of people who are just following their moral convictions without knowing exactly who they're following.

Most people know the story of how Jesus, the Son of God, came into being. One of the more interesting aspects of the story (and one that's also a big part of the Catholic faith) is the immaculate conception of Mary, precipitated by the appearance of the angel Gabriel, his message of Jesus' impending birth through Mary and the intervention of the Holy Spirit afterwards. Considering Joseph was a husband-to-be and the lovely couple didn't subscribe to the whole concept of sex before marriage, this event of immaculate conception remains one of the most intriguing episodes throughout Jesus' life, death and resurrection:*

29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called[b] the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. 37 For no word from God will ever fail.”

38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.

Since then, the laws of physics and biology have put the kibosh on any future acts of immaculate conception. But the Arizona state legislature stumbled up on a way to rekindle that long-lost act through the power of bill-making:

Arizona’s HB 2036 takes Nebraska’s 20-week abortion ban one step further by starting the clock on pregnancies at the woman’s last last menstrual period, which could be two weeks before fertilization.

Specifically, the bill would “[p]rohibit abortions at or after twenty weeks of gestation, except in cases of a medical emergency, based on the documented risks to women’s health and the strong medical evidence that unborn children feel pain during an abortion at that gestational age,” where gestational age is defined as “age of the unborn child as calculated from the first day of the last menstrual period of the pregnant woman.”

Take note of the underlined. The entire menstrual cycle lasts for about 28 days. The luteal phase, where the corpus luteum develops and subsequently atrophies sans fertilization of the egg, lasts up to 16 days.

In effect, this means that if a woman has sex with someone, she could technically be pregnant weeks before the pregnancy test, morning sickness or tell-tale lack of a period gives her the official heads-up. Not exactly immaculate conception, but they're getting there. It's more like "pre-pregnancy," where the state knows you're pregnant long before you decide to become pregnant. Or something.

More importantly, this means that if she decides, on the 19th or 20th week of gestation to abort, she'll technically be in violation of the abortion ban, because the window of opportunity slammed shut on the 18th week:

Guttmacher Institute’s State Issues Manager Elizabeth Nash told Raw Story that obstetricians start the clock on pregnancies after the “last menstrual period” to “be on the safe side.”

“Certainly, they are trying move the gestational cutoff from what had been over the last two years a 20-week gestational cutoff to an 18-week gestational cutoff,” Nash explained. “At the same time, they are trying to say, ‘Oh, this is a 20-week abortion ban.’ And they get away with that with the definition of gestational age that’s in the bill.”

Determining the gestation date this way is a rather creative and supremely sneaky goalpost move. Which means it serves conservative pro-lifers and their GOP counterparts well. Selling a 20-week abortion ban that actually kicks in two weeks earlier than anyone expects constitutes fraud and deception on part of bill's supporters, not that it matters much.

At some point, someone's gonna have the bright idea of suggesting that the pro-life anti-abortion contingent should just assume that all woman are presumed pregnant until actually pregnant, to eliminate all possibility of legal or illegal abortive acts. Of course, that'd also include hormonal contraceptives, since they prevent ovulation and fertilization. In short, basically anything that interferes with ovulation and fertilization. At that point, you'd have to wonder if that would include the entirely natural act of corpus luteum discharge.

Is a tampon or a sanitary napkin admissible as evidence of an abortion? Would birth control pills signify intent? How about someone experiencing a miscarriage?

Meanwhile, semen discharge from masturbation or wet dreams is largely overlooked. What? You seriously think the menfolk would willingly legislate their own reproductive faculties?**

*If you believe otherwise, fine. Don't try to take a chunk out of my ass over it, thanks.


**Nevermind the cases of surgical and chemical castration for sex offenders and black males with "virulent" perceived sexual appetites.

"...when the left wants to pretend they have no sense of humor, they are excellent at it. Yesterday in the riff about it, 'Okay, okay, fine. If we're gonna pay for this, at least let us have something for it. How about some sex videos?' If anybody doesn't realize that we are illustrating absurdity here by being absurd and that that is the trademark of this program ... But oh, no! 'Oh, of everything else you've said, that's the lowest of the low. Demanding sex video? Who do you think you are?' Lighten up. I remember using that phrase all the way back in 1989: Lighten up."

"...now, at the end of this week, I am the person that the women of AMERICA are to fear the most. What can I do to the women of AMERICA? Do I have the power to raise their taxes? I do not. Do I have the power to regulate their behavior? I do not. Do I have the power to make health care decisions for them? I do not. Do I have the power to withhold birth control pills from them? I do not. Do I have the power to audit their tax returns? I do not. Do I have the power to take their little four-year-old kindergarten student's lunch and throw it away and make 'em eat something else? I do not. Do I have the power to look into their personal life and leak the information to the media? I do not. Is there one bit of freedom that I can deny them? Can I raise their taxes? They want to blame me as being the person they should fear, when in fact the people doing all these things I just said I have no power to do, the DEMOCRAT PARTY (sic) is doing."

Rush Limbaugh remains the grand champion when it comes to unleashing one's inner asshole for both money and media fame. I forgot to add in the previous blog post that there's yet another way to neutralize an asshole: hit the asshole in his wallet. Or in Rush's case, his show's advertisers.

Countless people took to Twitter and petitioned companies that bought airtime on Rushbo to pull their ads in protest. So far, several advertisers were convinced to pull their ads from the Rush Limbaugh radio program, including:

• Sleep Train
• Select Comfort
• LegalZoom
• Quicken Loans
• Citrix

And as he discovered while on the air that Obama had called Fluke, Limbaugh mocked their exchange. “Aw. That is so compassionate! What a great guy,” Limbaugh said. “The president called her to make sure she’s okay. What is she, 30 years old? Thirty years old, a student at Georgetown law who admits to having so much sex that she can’t afford it anymore.”

Later on the show, the radio host laced into the president for telling Fluke that her parents should be proud of her.

“Your daughter appears before a congressional committee and says she’s having so much sex, she can’t pay for it and wants a new welfare program to pay for it. Would you be proud? I don’t know about you, but I’d be embarrassed. I’d disconnect the phone. I’d go into hiding and hope the media didn’t find me,” Limbaugh said.

I'd ask if it's too much for Rushbo to just shut the fuck up, but I find it more entertaining to see the ol' pillhead dig himself in the hole that much deeper.

By the way, thanks to Redeye's diligence in locating contacts to Rushbo's biggest sponsors and paymasters, I was reminded that Clear Channel, the radio channel hosting the Rush Limbaugh show, is currently owned by Bain Capital. You know, the company founded and run in part by none other than Mitt Robot Romney.

@DDSSBlog @PragObots Looky here: leveraged buyout of Clear Channel for $17.9 bil in 08. Scrambling to refinance $20.6 bil LBO debt in '11
— eclecticbrotha (@eclecticbrotha) March 2, 2012

Speaking of assholes, not only has District Judge Richard Cebull apologized to the president for getting caught forwarding the infamous "Obama dog" email, but he's also calling for an investigation...on himself:

U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull says he will apologize to President Obama and ask for a panel of judges to investigate his conduct after a Montana newspaper reported he had sent a racially inflammatory message using his courthouse email account last month.

"What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We're the pimps."

If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex. We want something for it. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch," he said.

Sigh. The War on Uteri™ continues unabated, from state legislatures churning out bill after bill to restrict, undermine and intimidate women from exercising control of their reproductive faculties to conservative front-liners like Rush Limbaugh and Foster Friess letting loose with ultimately misogynistic rhetoric such as the above.

Here we have financially well-off men with their own personal demons and presumed difficulty in maintaining their sexual vigor declaring women who wish to NOT be punished with pregnancy or STDs whenever they have sex on their own terms and with partners they choose, "prostitutes," "sluts" and "whores." You have to wonder if these men and others like them are just angry they can't get any unless they hold out the carrots of power and wealth and then hope some unsuspecting intern takes a bite. Sexual deprivation and frustration tends to manifest in strange ways.

“I get such a chuckle when these things come out. Here we have millions of our fellow Americans unemployed. We have jihadist camps being set up in central – in Latin America, which Rick has been warning about, and people seem to be so preoccupied with sex. I think it says something about our culture. We maybe need a massive therapy session so we can concentrate on what the real issues are. And this contraceptive thing, my gosh, it’s so — such inexpensive. Back in my days, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.”

But it's not just them. It's several segments of the national populace who enjoy hearing men like Limbaugh and Friess say the things they're too polite or afraid to openly proclaim themselves. These people have a low opinion of women who won't follow the narrow sexual path set down by a combination of religious doctrine and a pathological fear of sex itself. They can't enjoy sexual freedom for fear of being ostracized as a whore or a slut, hence appearances must be kept and "whores" must be shamed. Ta-Nehisi Coates calls it the "normalization of cruelty." I call it "unleashing your inner asshole."

I suppose this is how Republican Rep. Darrell Issa and his all-male panel on contraception and religious freedom feels. Oh, they won't openly admit it, but they're probably thinking it. From TPM:

On Capitol Hill, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) held hearings on contraception and religious freedom that produced the now-famous picture of a table full of men called to weigh in on access to contraceptives. Democrats wanted a woman — a Georgetown law student with a friend who lost an ovary because the university doesn’t cover birth control — to say her piece at the hearing, but Issa wouldn’t let her on the panel. He said she wasn’t “appropriate or qualified” to discuss the topic at hand.

*cue Scooby-Doo "huh?" noise*

Issa bristled at the charge and said Democrats could not add their witness because she was not a member of the clergy, but a student at Georgetown. He also faulted Democrats for not submitting the name of the witness, Sandra Fluke, in time.

Fluke would have talked about a classmate who lost an ovary because of a syndrome that causes ovarian cysts. Georgetown, which is affiliated with the Catholic Church, does not insure birth control, which is also used to treat the syndrome.

Issa said the hearing is meant to be more broadly about religious freedom and not specifically about the contraception mandate in the Health Reform law.

It's an issue that affects women's health, so you'd think there would be, well, women on the panel concerning a topic that affects them most. No dice. And plenty of people are calling foul, as they should.

“This is an issue about women’s health and I believe that women’s health should be covered in all fo the insurance plans,” Pelosi insisted at her press briefing this morning, refuting the GOP’s claim that the debate should focus on “religious liberties.”

“Where are the women? And that’s a good question for the whole debate. Where are the women?” she asked. “Imagine, having a panel on women’s health and then not having any women on the panel, duh!”