Run – Don’t Walk – Out of South Dakota

Mark Morford at sfgate.com tells all the women (and teen girls) in South Dakota to hit the road. To get out while the gettin’s good.

Attention all funky sexy single intelligent women of South Dakota (assuming there are any left):

It is time. Pack it up. Strip the bed, box up the cat, load the U-Haul, call your hip friends over in Minneapolis, move out West, or East, or anywhere with a mind-set not stuck like a bloody nail in the moral coffin of 1845. Let this be your clarion call. Get the hell out,
right now.

Here is why: Your state hates you. Your state, apparently run by pallid sexless demagogic men who think they know something of God and morality but know only ignominy and the smell of sulfur and death in their nightmares, thinks you are irresponsible dumb-ass meat, unable to handle your own decisions, your own body, your sex. Your state’s leaders and your Republican governor, Mike Rounds, wish to treat you like meaningless, voiceless chattel. Get out now. You already know why.

(…)

Of course, with any luck, with any sort of divine feminine intervention, with any sort of national common sense, this sickening attack on female choice will quickly go the way of “intelligent design,” of the Terry Schiavo zombies, of the WMD zealots. It will dissolve and implode like the nasty moral insult it so very is. We can only hope. And of course, vote, in November.

Until then, it would behoove the final dozen or so sexually attuned, lusciously feminine women in South Dakota — not to mention every teenage girl within a 1,000-mile radius — to pack their bags and book their tickets outta town before they lock the gates and start the fires. I hear Canada is lovely this time of year. What are you waiting for?

Abortion War On Women Birth Control Rapists’ Rights Reproductive Rights Pro-choice South Dakota

Lies and the Lying Liars

Two “must read” posts by Reddhead at firedoglake.

“All Hat, No Cattle” – about George Bush and the unravelling web of lies.

It’s not enough that the President lies about the big things. He lies about the little ones, too. (…)

George Bush is a product, with all sorts of fun labeling on the box — nifty claims of “made with whole grains” and “fortified with vitamins and minerals,” but what we’re really looking at is a sort of candidate who, when you get down to what is really there, is a whole lot of fluff and nonsense, lots of fillers and ultra-refined crap, with a really good marketing team behind him. He sounds good when the team has everything working like a well-oiled machine, but those moments when he’s off-script, off-plan, being “real” as opposed to “scripted,” you get a real sense of who he is — and in a crisis, it’s not a pretty picture.

It’s this pattern of behavior with this President that concerns me, the real behavior, not the spin and the projection and the tap dance that his Wurlitzer pals try to sell like so many PR folks with a wind-up Energizer bunny in their pocket — and it ought to concern all Americans.

Faced with a crisis or some question of his leadership, his integrity, pretty much any question at all, George Bush’s first response is to freeze, then huddle with his staff and come up with a media response. It’s all statement, no actual leadership, no actual work. The PR blitz becomes the entire focus of this Administration — all campaign mode, all the time, with no real concern for doing the actual work — for really digging into the nitty gritty and governing. (emphasis mine)

All hat, no cattle. (…)

In the other, Redd discusses Murray Waas’ article in the National Journal, and gives us only two choices with regard to Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. And – unsurprisingly -neither instills a lot of confidence in the man who has his finger on the big red button.

Here’s my conclusion after reading Murray Waas’ exceptional new piece in the National Journal today: (1) the President either knew that Saddam posed no immediate threat to the United States and repeatedly lied to the American public and leaders around the world (and allowed multiple members of his Administration to lie about it as well) or (2) he doesn’t bother doing his job, and had no idea what information was contained in multiple sensitive national security briefs that he was given over a long period of time, and no one in the Administration bothered to clue him in on this.

You choose.

I’ve wracked my brain this afternoon to come up with another alternative — but no matter how I twist it around in my brain, it comes back to “he knew and lied” or “he doesn’t bother doing his job.”

The War on Women Continues

Mississippi has joined South Dakota in its War on Women, with state legislators passing a Rapists’ Rights Bill. Gov. Haley Barbour says he will likely sign the bill even though it provides no exceptions for rape or incest. See the AP report here, and firedoglake’s reaction here.

And in Utah – a redder-than-red state – molesting fathers have more rights than the daughters they impregnate. And fetuses have more rights than the women they inhabit.

From the Salt Lake City Tribune: Incest is no exception to a father’s right to know what’s going on in his daughter’s life.

That was the message from Utah lawmakers who refused Monday to make an exception for incest victims in a proposed law that would require parental consent and notification before a girl’s abortion.

Utah wants to change its law – from requiring a physician to notify both parents, to notifying one of a minor girl’s parents 24 hours before she has an abortion. The law also allows for a girl – whose pregnancy is the result of incest – to go to court to avoid parental consent, but there is no exception to the notification. Doctors are still required to report it to one or the other parent – even if she is pregnant as a result of incest.

Sadly, some of the state representatives are so feeble-minded that they don’t understand why this might be a problem. One even said it’s the female’s fault for having sex and thus she should have to suffer the consequences.

West Jordan Republican Sen.Chris Buttars scoffed at McCoy’s suggestion that the legislation might force teens to other states for abortions or into their bathrooms to attempt the procedure on themselves.

“Abortion isn’t about women’s rights. The rights they had were when they made the decision to have sex,” Buttars said. “This is the consequences. The consequence is they should have to talk to their parents.” (emphasis mine)

Apparently, even rape and incest are her fault, and she must be punished through forced childbirth.

Digby says: I find this refreshing. These Republicans admit that women give up their rights when they have sex. Good to know. And they believe a child-molesting father’s parental rights are more important than the daughter he impregnated. Also good to know.
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