On International Womens' Day, Ryan brags about gutting Planned Parenthood

A reminder that abortions are at a lower rate than before Roe Vs. Wade. Thanks Obama,our most feminist President. Part of that credit goes to Planned Parenthood which once was supported by both parties and still has overwhelming popular support. Even Trump offered them more money if they would stop performing abortions, which is 3% of their work and not paid for by tax payer money.

This Women's Day, Paul Ryan ended Obamacare's elimination of the disparity of healthcare rates between men and women and got rid of support for birth control. In effect,the Ryancare plan will cost women several thousand more dollars to be insured.

The Washington Post Finally Defends Planned Parenthood

++Taking their time, the Washington Post posted an editorial calling for politicians to lay off Planned Parenthood because it provides vital services, is popular and ,by the way, did nothing illegal.

++Meanwhile Ted Cruz is ramping up a 50 state campaign of anti-abortion activists against Planned Parenthood. Cruz also vows to shut down the government if Planned Parenthood gets any federal funding.

++Meanwhile JEB! said that Planned Parenthood should not be federally funded because they do nothing about women's health. He should consult with his mother who was on the board of PP for years.

++Planned Parenthood is suing the state of Louisiana because Piyush Jindal is denying PP access to Medicaid funding, which is vital for its service to the poor.

++Piyush actually waved photos from the "sting" videos at Planned Parenthood demonstrators.

++Ben Carson claims PP is conducting genicide against the Black community, an old saw.

Mixed Metaphors and Dead People

++President Obama in the past week has been likened to Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler both. Ms. Lindsey Graham likened Iran to Hitler and Obama to Chamberlain. Mike Huckabee ,when he wasn't using SWAT teams to stop women getting abortions, said that Obama was marching the Jews to the oven doors. John Kerry was called a Judas for betraying Christ, who is what--Israel, Congress. I can't make these out--Donald Trump's aide called Obama an "Islamo-fascist,Nazi appeaser, homosexual Muslim". Doesn't the Islamo cover the Muslim and is he a Nazi who appeases or someone who appeases Nazis who is a fascist?  Inquiring minds want to know.

++I have been inundated by right-wingers who want to convince me my sister and mother were wrong to be officers in Planned Parenthood. Well, they admit the videographers did steal people's identity and should be persecuted but this was for a greater good. Just look at Margaret Sanger's YOUTUBE. I pointed out to them that Richard Scaife , conservative philanthropist and funder of the Arkansas Project, had meetings with Margaret Sanger before she died and came away impressed and told the Right to back off Planned Parenthood. 

++Now it seems to me the Right has a cult of the Dead. Their boogiemen are all dead--Margaret Sanger, Saul Alinsky, Karl Marx. And their hero--Ronald Reagan is dead. Joe McCarthy is still dead, although he really lives on in the modern conservative mind.

++It seems to me that the women in the video who used the stolen credit card was a rightwing version of Bernardine Dohrn. You forget these people are involved in terrorism against abortion clinics and doctors.

++For the Religious Right, you should remember early Christians only thought someone was a person if they were out of the womb one month.

++But those wacky women,they want to shop for shoes and then they change their minds--I think today would be a perfect day for an abortion. C'mon. It's not like abortions are on a shopping list. 

++I'm disappointed that 90% of Planned Parenthood's abortions are in the first trimester so the tissue you get is the size of a kidney bean. That ruins my #Benghazi! barbecue. 

++The right's hero George W. had his dad pay for abortions for two of his girlfriends. I guess you can't criticize because it's a guy thing. 

++All these e-mails are from 60+ year old white males. I guess they shoot blanks now but why should males have anything to do with women's reproductive rights. We can't even draw a woman's genitalia.

Outrage!

++Hillary released her medical records. Her blood pressure in 100/65. Not bad.

++Please watch Democracy Now with Amy Goodman about the Planned Parenthood sting videos. Everyone involved are fakes. The purported company is a front. The producer operates under an alias and the woman interviewing the Planned Parenthood person is using a stolen identity and credit card. 

++Reality Check has a long article about how all of this stuff goes back to an extreme right-wing group named "groundswell" which is linked to Operation Rescue and anti-aborgtion groups involved in the killings of doctors. Included among their sponsors is Jinni Thomas, the tea bagger spouse of Clarence Thomas and Ted Cruz, who threatens to close the government over Planned Parenthood funding. 

The Wrecking Crew --Part 2

++No, they haven't given up. Jeb! speaking about Medicare wants it phased out. Speaking before Americans for Prosperity, Jeb likened his program to Paul Ryan's harebrained scheme to give Medicare eligible people vouchers. FYI--as someone eligible for Medicare this September, Ryan's plan would cost me an additional $6,800--which I don't have. So if I can;t afford the Republican plan, how many millions of Americans would get screwed. A senior citizen barked at Jeb!--"I paid into it every year and now you want to take it away from me." Yes, he does.

++The rightwing blogosphere is saying that Social Security Disability is running out of money and should be cut. Having a brother-in-law on it and knowing what a lifesaver it has been for both him and his family, you might want to know that ,yes, periodically SSDI does have a shortfall, which is easily remedied by the larger Social Security Trust Fund reimbursing it. This has gone on for years.

++On Social Security, the Democrats managed to kill a Senate proposal to cut Social Security in real dollars and extend the retirement age. This will go on. The GOP is committed to privatizing Social Security, which would be bedlam and create trillions in new debt.

++The other "hot" issue for the right now is Medicaid. Medicaid expansion saves hospitals, particularly in rural areas where the GOP base live , and saves state's monies. But the Red states, nearly 20 of them, refused to expand the program because of the original Obamacare Supreme Court decision. 

++Then we have the continued war against Planned Parenthood. Besides the abortion issue,the Right's attack on Planned Parenthood has to do with contraceptives and a woman's right to choose. She doesn't even get to the abortion stage, just birth control.

++Then we have the Republican's attacking pensions. I guess no one gets older anymore. What in the social contract, don't they understand. There is nothing in the GOP anymore that speaks to the infirm or the elderly.

I would be remiss

++If I didn't mention the New York Times Editorial on the "Deceptive Campaign Against Planned Parenthood."

++A sting operation mounted by a fake non-profit tried to portray Planned Parenthood of selling fetal tissue to medical labs for profit.

++The campaign has triggered to Congressional Investigations and laws in Arizona and North Carolina.

++Of course, this isn't true because it is outlawed anyway and the tapes show clearly that the money mentioned was about shipping costs. The disposal of the fetal material for medical purposes can only be done with the patient's permission.

++We all know what this game is. That's why this blog has said time and time again that only 3% of Planned Parenthood's activities were devoted to abortion services. However, I think that played into its critics hands. What is 100% of Planned Parenthood was devoted to abortion services? It's still legal--although threatened. 

Government Shutdown Coming Right Up

Steve Benan of Washington Monthly claims there is a 70% chance of a government shutdown. I agree with him. Even Nancy Pelosi agrees. It's not coming because of some ideological stance by the GOP but from sheer incompetence. The House budget process, which has now zoomed to over 500 amendments,physically means the House will miss the early March deadline. There is not even enough time to reconcile the House and Senate since the two exist on different planets. I'm not even sure the House, even though it's been running to 4am, will have enough time to work through their own budget, let alone discuss a Senate version.

There are scads of things to write about in the House GOP budget. They intend to gut all government agencies that make the basic rules for the economy and even the IRS, which has to collect the limited tax dollars needed to keep the sinking ship afloat. Virtually every cut to a program offered by the GOP eliminates jobs. An early estimate of the GOP budget is that it will cost 1 million jobs.

Last night they cut all funding for the new Consumer Protection Agency. The budget goes far beyond just gutting anything that Barack Obama proposed over the last two years. It is a declaration of war on basically all government programs, with the exception of the military,which have been developed since the last Depression. A list of the cuts is mind-boogling. The fascinating point of the exercise is that the overall GOP House budget does not cut the annual deficit or the national debt. Top that off and it kills jobs and doesn't create any.

But the kicker for me was the orchestrated attack on Planned Parenthood, which received $363 million last year from the federal government. Rep. Mike Pence claimed that the elimination of federal funding for Planned Parenthood was a "victory for life". Planned Parenthood called the act "extreme and dangerous."

Mr. Anti-abortion Chris Smith from New Jersey described a abortion procedure during the second trimester in the graphic detail we haven't heard since Jesse Helms would describe pornographic acts on the Senate floor. Smith let a little cat out of the bag. He said Planned Parenthood performed 300,000 abortions per year. He claimed that was one-fifth of the abortions performed every year. So we have gone from 50 million per year to 1.5 million, closer to a statistical reality. But color me dubious still because we know from Planned Parenthood's own ads that they perform 300,000 screenings for breast cancer per year. So it's odd that the number is identical to Smith's assertions about abortions. But at least we can dispel the 50 million, Mao-purge like figures.

Men should really stop pontificating about women's health issues. Jackie Speier (D-California) immediately responded to Chris Smith and talked about having the very same procedure Smith described because of necessity and talked about losing the child. The American Taliban can't silence American women like they would want to.

Since the House Republicans want to defund Richard Nixon's creation the Environmental Protection Agency,why should we be surprised that they defunded another one of his creations--Title X Programs? Title X was created in 1970 to provide comprehensive family planning services, including all preventable health services for women. This is the program that provides Planned Parenthood with its funding. By eliminating the program,you essentially close down 4,500 community-based clinics. These clinics provide breast and cervical cancer screenings, HIV preventative education, pregnancy diagnosis and counseling. Of course, this program primarily supports lower income families. Over 1.2 million youth and adults participated in these programs last year.

Now if you are truly interested in lowering the number of abortions in America, wouldn't you support family planning programs and contraception? We know from Bristol Palin that abstinence programs don't work.

Nancy Pelosi said that the whole night's debate--several hours on Planned Parenthood--was surreal but that it posed serious risks to women's health. She called out Republicans on their clear position against family planning and urged them to go openly on the record against the idea. Jackie Speier wondered aloud what the whole Planned Parenthood debate had to do with creating jobs.

You could go batty just writing about Republican lunacy at both the federal and state level. A Republican legislator in Montana has entered a bill to declare global warming "natural" and "beneficial". After two years of marriage equality in New Hampshire,Republicans want to repeal the same sex marriage law because "it might encourage the development of sharia law."

I leave it to a leftwing blogger who parodied these efforts by writing a brief post that "Arizona has outlawed Karma."

Friday in Crazy Town

My apologies--It's the "Al Qaeda Seven", not six, who are the DOJ lawyers who defended the detainees. I saw Liz Cheney's vile little ad last night. Rachel Maddow probably had the best attitude--just laugh at it and mock it. But lawyers defending the rights of the accused being attacked as somehow in bed with terrorists is disgusting and not even good McCarthyite theater.

Former President of Notre Dame, Father Hesburgh once told me,"The greatest tragedy in life is that the young must grow up in a world created by 80 year old men." Since Colin Powell threw John McCain under the bus by calling for the repeal of DADT, the elderly McCain held court in the Senate by citing a letter signed by 1,000 former generals and rank officers demanding that DADT not be repealed. The problem with this letter is that the average age of the signatories is 74 years old with many on the list over 90. One general's wife signed his name while the man had Alzheimer's and had not been able to communicate for six years. Another widow signed for a man already dead. And several are now protesting they weren't even asked but they found their names on it anyway. None of the signatories served in the military during the time of DADT.

Not to be outsmarted again by Barack Obama, John McCain and Joe Lieberman are introducing the Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act of 2010 ,which will create a "high value detainee" team,made up of the intelligence agencies" to determine how a detainee is to be interrogated and whether that person should be declared "unprivileged enemy belligerents", meaning they would not have constitutional rights and could be detained indefinitely. Both men have serious problems with understanding anything about law. The ACLU is rightfully challenging this mess as unconstitutional. Besides the legal problem, this would ensure that detainees didn't talk to American officials. All those charged under civilian procedures have talked and provided invaluable intelligence to authorities.

Old geezers are complaining that the Coffee Parties I previously wrote about are fronts created by Organizing for America (OFA) at President Obama's behest. Leftwing blogs actually say they are creations of moderate Republicans ,who are too shamed of the tea parties. If its OFA, I say,"Bravo, David Plouffe".

Charlie Cook claims that there is no way the Republicans will not take the House. Anyone predicting anything about the 2010 elections is nuts. We're cranking up to 20 retirements per party and we're looking at a vast amount of primaries, which will determine the face of the general election. The Beltway pundits have not a clue as to what is going on. Republicans have to beat something with something and as yet they have been unable to articulate anything they believe in--let alone anything anyone could believe. In the last ten days, there has been considerable pushback against Republican obstructionism. Jim Bunning has become the poster child of the party, effectively cutting off the unemployment insurance for over 1 million and ending several hundred thousand transport workers.

What will be clear in the next few months will be the shape of the races for the state houses. here it is looking more predictable.

President Obama yesterday read to representatives from the health insurance industry letters he receives from citizens who can no longer afford insurance or who have lost coverage. he and Secretary Sibelius demanded the companies post their rate hikes on the internet and the reasons for these rate increases.

Later in the day he met with progressive Democrats, who were threatening to vote against the health care bill because it lacks a public option. His message was simple and clear: think about the 30 million uninsured who will benefit; and think about how hard it would be to pass anything progressive if this failed. Apparently, the attendees got the message.

Appparently, Bart Stupak from Michigan isn't buying. He is threatening to bring the house down over the abortion issue.

This raises an issue that has been bothering me. The pro-life movement has enormous number of men protesting and agitating, and even killing doctors. Why aren't the men who favor reproductive rights out in the streets in the same way? The campaign against Planned Parenthood is destructive to health care for women. Over 89% of their work has nothing to do with abortions. Yet, we have candidates now running against them, promising to cut their funding as if this old group is ACORN in disguise. And we have states like Utah trying to make miscarriages a capital offense. And these bills are introduced by men. In the whole health care debate, the first people thrown under the bus for some political compromise are women. Those who believe Roe v. Wade finished the issue have to wake up to the steady, consistent erosion of the woman's right to choose.