Why I stand with women.

             I've been asked by men I know who have occasionally read these posts or talked with me. They usually ask a question. Why do you say what you say about the so-called war on women? "Are you gay, one of the girl's?" I've been asked. No, not that it matters. "Are you doing this just to get laid?" No, I'm not doing this to get laid.

I am doing this because I believe equal means equal.

I do this because I have a daughter.

She is a beautiful, brilliant, nineteen year old Sophomore at a well respected, small Liberal Arts College in Ohio.

When she finishes her education I want her to be able to do whatever she wants. And to be paid the same as a man with equal credentials and talent.

I want her to have full and equal access to the justice system if the unthinkable happens.

I want her to have full and equal access to the healthcare system without conservative religious views codified as law to prevent that. Having a uterus is not a pre-existing condition any more than having testicles is.

I want her vote to be counted and not discarded because she's a student.

I want her to live in a nation where she is not a second class citizen, condemned to a state of socio-economic slavery simply because of gender.

I want her to live in a Nation where a Violence Against Women Act is not used as a political football and is unnecessary.

All I want is a Country where she is a citizen first and a woman, second.

Apparently this is too much to ask.

Ninety-three years ago this week the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified. That finally gave women the right to vote.

During those years the fight for women's rights has made significant progress. We have a long road to travel yet but we were always moving in the right direction. I knew this would be a better world for my little girl.

It seems I may have been too hopeful and naive.

Both of us are in Ohio. Not a woman friendly State anymore.

Ohio, through most of it's history was a powerful political State. It was a hotbed of the Abolition movement. Major lines of the Underground Railroad went through the State. 

Many of the stations are still standing as private homes. The owners are proud to point out the history of their house and the hiding places for escaped slaves to visitors. 

Lincoln carried Ohio twice.

During the Civil War Ohio produced more troops per capita than any other State in the Union. Many of the Generals were Ohioans also. Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Harrison, Hooker and Custer to name a few.

Ohio continued as a political powerhouse. Senator Sherman of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was a progressive Senator from Ohio.

During the Progressive era Ohio helped those progressive laws pass in the House and Senate.

Ohio produced six Presidents following the Union victory. Two of them were assassinated.

What I am trying to show is Ohio has a tradition of being a moderate, yet powerful force in American politics. A defender of liberty. Sadly in the last decade that has changed.

Now Ohio is a leader of a different kind. The reactionary Republicans that have seized the State are determined to support and champion the rejection of history, science and women as an equal citizen.

In 2011 the lizard brained psychopaths in the Ohio House passed the Heartbeat Bill. They did this in the center ring of the National Political Circus. 

These venal, theocratic rat bastards, in the pocket of the Tea Party and the Westboro Baptist wing of the Party gave us a bill banning abortion when a fetal heartbeat can be detected, About six weeks, pror to most women even knowing they are pregnant.

In committee, a woman undergoing an ultrasound so her fetus could testify made a joke that a transvaginal probe would work better. The compassionate men on the committee chuckled over that witty bon mot.

The Ohio Senate, after having their asses handed to them by the people of Ohio on Union Busting, buried the heartbeat bill.

The Republicans in 2011 came up with gerrymandered political districts.They appeared to be drawn by Strom Thurmond on acid. So even as Mitt Romney's Presidential dreams were gutted like a trout in Ohio, a more rightwing batshit crazy Legislature was elected.

Thus in their wisdom the Republican Legislators in the Great State of Ohio, after seeing Ohio reject the GOP social stances in the Presidential election, acted. 

With clear logic they came to the conclusion the most pressing issue facing the State was abortion. So, they went after women. They acted with the glee of frat boys spiking drinks at a party.

In order to avoid a ballot repeal by the sane, they put their demented views into the Budget. 

As believers of input from the public they are supposed to represent, these regs were slipped into the budget at the last minute to avoid public hearings. No point turning over a rock to expose these creepy  slimy slugs to the light of day.

They doubled the waiting period to forty-eight hours. An ultrasound must be performed with a voice over of what's going on. 

A woman must be told the chances of carrying the child to term. Healthy or not.

Since being a member of Ohio's Legislature automatically makes you a de facto OB/GYN they redefined pregnancy. It now begins at conception. After all what does the AMA know?

There is a script healthcare providers have to read that links abortion to increased chances of breast cancer. It doesn't matter the American Cancer Society says there's no correlation. A bunch of liberals. 

Fetal pain, something that has never been established as fact must be mentioned as if it's an accepted medical concept. Any MD that doesn't lie to his patient can be found guilty of a felony and fined $1,000,000.(not a typo)

The redefinition of pregnancy makes some forms of birth control abortion agents . So to get the pill, an IUD or Plan B, you get the lecture, ultrasound and waiting period.

The GOP says this is for the health and safety of women. That would be why any women's healthcare clinic that even mentions abortion as an option goes to the end of the line for funding, including rape crisis centers. A child of rape is a gift from God, you know.
 

This puts the anti-abortion fronts known as pregnancy crisis centers to the fore. They routinely lie to women about the effects of abortion. 

In other states they've been caught saying abortion created antibodies that will induce miscarriages in future pregnancies. 

They've tried to link abortion to mental health issues, falsely. 

They say the pill causes abortions, again contradicting the AMA. 

Also, condoms are naturally porous so they don't work. 

The only  way acceptable way to avoid pregnancy is the ole rhythm method or abstinence.

The sole reason for these regulations undoing decades of progress is to force women to give birth. They want to humiliate unmarried women who have sex. Basically codifying slut shaming.

Since women are wilful, sinful creatures they need to be shown the sonograms. Obviously they don't realize that is a baby, not an undeveloped clump of cells.

We all know they blithely seek abortion as an easy, convenient form of birth control. They are too stupid and hormone addled to make these decisions anyway. After all they refuse to accept the consequences of their sinful, wanton desire to have sex outside of marriage.

The very best way to keep these feminazis out of public life is to control their reproductive options. 

Because of the hippies and commies in the Sixties, women have decided they should no longer be subservient to men. They have this absurdist notion they are as intelligent as and equal to men. The girls think they deserve equal pay also.

The Nineteenth Amendment was a mistake. Ask Ann Coulter.

The best way to remove these pesky women from business and politics is let's keep them pregnant through most of their reproductive years. If they can't plan their life they have to settle for women's work. They'll stop taking jobs from men. We'll quit wasting money and time educating them. After all how much education does a walking life support system for a fetus actually need? 

The girls need to go back to their God ordained role in the family. An incubator and child rearer. They need to be obedient to their husband.

To these views being passed off as helping women I say, are you fucking crazy? This is the Twenty-First Century for Christ's sake. We can not treat women like we are still a bronze age nomadic tribe.

I respect women as the individuals they are.

I respect women as equal in all ways before the law and in society.

I want my Daughter to live a long fulfilling life seeking her happiness, not some preacher's view of that.

I do this for my daughter's better tomorrow.
Who do you do it for??

Kasich in '16? The branding of the meritocracy of mediocrity.

          Governor John Kasich(R-OH). has utilized the non-denials from election playbooks to play down a supposed groundswell of support for a future run at the Presidency. Let's remember that in 2000 he left the US House of Representatives and started a campaign for the White House.
He tried to position himself as the guy who single handedly balanced the Federal budget. John boy has never been shy about taking credit where credit isn't due. His campaign collapsed under massive indifference.
So. He took a job with Lehman Brothers(Yeah, those guys), hired on at Fox News and was considered a viable political commentator. Kasich had a Fox show called "The Heartland" until he started running for Governor. He subbed for Hannity and O'Reilly. He was seen all over the Network.
During his run he was on with Sean. The appearance was basically a telethon for Kasich's fundraising efforts. Not surprisingly Hannity tossed Kasich softballs and mused about how important "we" win the Ohio Governorship. Sean has never been shy about overt partisan campaigning on his show. The only real surprise is Fox allowed it for so long.
John ran a campaign against Democratic Governor Ted Strickland that was the usual GOP,Tea Party infused, fact challenged travesty that 2010 was so noted for. It was vicious. He blamed the meltdown of Ohio's economy on Governor Strickland, ignoring the catastrophic collapse caused by his former employer Lehman Brothers and Wall Street using the market as a casino. As it was he barely won by about a percentage point in a year when The Tea Party and GOP bitch slapped complacent Democrats across the country.
To plug an 8 billion dollar hole in the Budget (exaggerated, some reports said) Kasich slashed State Jobs(as he gave large raises to political appointees) cut school funding by nearly 12% and funding to local governments by 50%. This lead to layoffs of  teachers.firefighters and police officers and curtailment of other vital services. All this did was move the need for funding to local property tax levies. The administration also thought it was a good idea to eliminate the Estate Tax and cut taxes for the wealthiest Ohioans.
The 2010 electoral massacre gave Kasich a nominally GOP State Senate and House.The reality though was most of the freshmen were Tea Party members or sympathetic to them. This caused issues for the leadership in both Houses. Zealots are notoriously tough to keep in line. A lot like herding cats.
Like George Bush in 2004, Kasich felt a razor thin victory was a mandate to over reach. They decided it was an amazingly good idea to take on Organized Labor. Bills were introduced and passed stripping bargaining rights for Public Sector Unions. Kasich pitched this as a way to save local governments money and make Ohio more business friendly. We Democrats knew if this passed Private Sector Unions were next.
The protests I attended at the Ohio State House were the largest I'd seen since the opposition to the Vietnam War. I liked the fact there were no clubs and tear gas. Union members from across the State voiced their opposition. A Delegation from Wisconsin arrived in a show of solidarity. You know you have issues when WI feels sorry for you. After assorted Republican political shenanigans the bill passed and was signed into law.
Immediately those opposed to this scathing strike against traditional Union rights sprang into action.
A petition drive to put this law on the ballot for repeal garnered a record amount of signatures in a record amount of time.
Panicked by poll numbers the GOP tried to negotiate. They said they would remove restriction on Police Unions in a blatant attempt to divide and conquer. To their credit the Ohio Fraternal Order Of Police told them to shove it. The Republicans offered to repeal if the ballot measure was dropped. They basically said, trust us. We'll change the bill. Since all opposing committee testimony was ignored, the decision was made not to trust them.
So, as massive amounts of out of State money poured in, The Right tried to paint the supporters of repeal as unreasonable for not negotiating. This ignored the Legislature's steamrolling this bill through.
Kasich stumped for the law. GOP contenders Mitt Romney and Rick Perry came out in opposition to repeal. A Republican operative I know said the poll numbers was only an education problem. Voters needed to be taught why repeal was bad. He predicted the repeal would fail. He also predicted Romney would take Ohio by 5 points.
The repeal won 61% to 39%. Kasich and the Republicans had their asses handed to them.
So the Legislature looking at the vicious fight going on over the repeal and the impending defeat of their law they continued business as usual.  They basically outlawed abortion.
The Ohio House introduced The Heartbeat bill in the Spring of 2011. This bill banned abortion once a fetal heartbeat was detected. This usually occurs around five or six weeks before most women even realize they are pregnant. There was also no exemptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother. At the time it would have been the most restrictive abortion law in the country.
The Republicans had testimony from fetuses via ultra sound in committee. They heard from supposed "abortion survivors", and women who said they were mislead about the effects of abortion. Opponents' testimony was given short shrift.
The House Speaker admitted the bill was designed to challenge Roe v. Wade. Right to life groups were split on the bill. It passed in the House along party lines.
When asked about the bill the Governor's Press Secretary said the Governor doesn't take a position on every bill and took the opportunity to fly Kasich's pro life banner for the base.
On the same day the House passed three abortion bills. One banned abortion after 20 weeks. One prohibited the coming insurance exchanges from having abortion coverage in any policy sold there. And the Heartbeat bill.
The first two passed the Senate and became law. The heartbeat bill languished in the Senate and died there at the end of the session.
2012. Social issues were debated in the Presidential campaign. The President won Ohio, convincingly.
Social issues were also debated in the Ohio United States Senate campaign. Democrat Sherrod Brown spanked challenger Josh Mandel the Eddie Haskell of Ohio politics.
Due to the gerrymandered districts in Ohio more extremist right wing State Reps and Senators were elected. There is a veto proof majority in both Houses. Following the rejection of their social agenda they did the only logical thing. The GOP immediately went after abortion, again.
They passed regressive attacks on women's health and rights in the biannual budget bill. This stops a ballot repeal. Many Dems I know felt these were so restrictive that the Governor would use the line item veto on them. I disagreed. I would have rather been wrong. He let them stand. Texas was on stage at the time and Ohio sorta slid under the lights not getting the outrage it deserved.
Prior to signing the Budget Kasich took every opportunity to mention his pro life credentials. By signing that bill he was presenting himself as a fearless defender of the unborn and a champion of marginalizing women. This was for the National conservative base.
He has received presidential endorsements(meaningless this early). He's already appearing on Fox and getting softballed. He came out in support of a balanced budget amendment, a perennial conservative favorite.
So I don't care about denials. John's preparing a run.
The best way to derail him is to make him a one term Gov. However his tendency to go off script would have been fun to watch as he crashed and burned.
The people here in Ohio have to take back our State from the extreme.
Ohio was once reasonable.
It must be again.

What happens when you turn the Torquemada Wing of The GOP loose...

         The stampede of so-called conservative thought over the cliff of sanity may actually be proof of evolution for science deniers. Since Newt Gingrich enabled the reactionary right to take over the GOP House majority in 1994 The Republican Party has developed a "wide stance". Their stance on issues was once narrow. Government was the problem, not the answer. taxes were too high and Welfare Queens were a sign of the downfall of America. It was basically the Gospel of Saint Ronnie.
Gingrich helped engineer the first loss of the House of Representatives by the Democratic Party in forty years.They did this by making Liberal a term of derision, uniting the right wing factions and stoking the underlying racial fears and tensions present in American life. They immediately over reached with reactionary slash and burn policies. Clear cognizant political analysis was a skill the GOP lacked then and now.
The idea that any Democrat winning the White House was an illegitimate usurpation of the will of the mythical conservative American majority took root and blossomed. Unfortunately the bloom was the Rafflesia arnoldii. The corpse flower. It's name is an apt description of it's scent.
The Republicans spent the Nineties as the Minority, then the majority party, trying to destroy, discredit and remove President William Jefferson Clinton.
President and Mrs. Clinton were accused of murdering Assistant White Counsel Vince Foster who tragically took his own life. (I'm expecting this to be resurrected by the Beck's and Limbaugh's should Hillary run in '16)A special prosecutor was appointed to investigate a land deal in Arkansas called Whitewater, The prosecutor was replaced for not being aggressive enough in his investigation of the President and was replaced By Ken Starr. After five years and millions of dollars Starr managed to convict Clinton Arkansas associates Susan and Jim McDougal along with Clinton's successor as Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker and have the conviction of Webster Hubbell overturned for prosecutorial misconduct.
Failing to find criminal conduct in Whitewater, Starr expanded the scope of his investigation. It spread through the Executive Branch like MRSA. Firing of people in the White House travel office. No traction. Obstruction accusations against Hillary. No traction. Fraud. Nope. They eventually found Monica Lewinski. I am not proud of how this young woman was treated by we on the Left. She was ridiculed and vilified.She was not the first woman ever seduced by men with power. And won't be the last.
Starr recommended the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton for lying under oath about a blow job (perjury) and trying to stop the investigation of said blow job. (Obstruction of Justice). In a lame duck session the GOP controlled House voted basically along party lines to impeach President Clinton. This was the second time a President was impeached by the House. On a straight party line vote the Senate, for the second time in it's history, failed to convict on Bills of Impeachment. And this was with a Republican majority. This action was unpopular with the American people as the President had an approval rating of over 60%. The Republican response was pretty much, Sorry Honey, it's been a long time and I prematurely pulled the trigger.
Al Gore, distancing himself from Clinton won the popular vote and saw the Electoral College handed to George Bush by the Supreme Court.
After his disastrous first term President Bush and the Republicans lost the House and Senate in the '06 mid terms. Until then Bush had a rubber stamp Congress that enabled him to spend us into record debt by reducing taxes as we went to war for the first time ever. Following these tax cuts the GOP went on a spending spree like a thief using a stolen high limit credit card. The debt ceiling was repeatedly raised with no qualms by a Republican House. Oh, after gaining a House Majority the Democrats did not vote to impeach Bush or Cheney. They instigated no political witch hunts. They did not repeatedly hold political repeal votes that had no chance of passing the Senate. They actually tried to govern. Imagine that.
In 2008 Senator Barack Obama was elected President in an impressive victory over Senator John McCain. The right wing immediately went into bat shit crazy mode.
A person I know who was a Republican operative at the time said had they nominated a true conservative they would have won. He also said this in '12 when Romney had his ass handed to him by President Obama. Election night in '08 Sean Hannity said he was going to be a leader in the resistance. Mere hours after the '08 election Obama Derangement Syndrome was in full swing. The right wing idea that a Democrat could not be elected President without massive fraud was back. Any Democratic President was illegitimate.The election had to have been stolen. It is so easy to manufacture a few million votes on cue.
On Inauguration Day in 2009, Republican leaders met to plot a way to obstruct any meaningful agenda put forth by the President.
Immediately the existence of Bush spending policies ceased to exist. The record debt and near collapse of the economy was the doing of a President who had not been in office. The lies and misrepresentations were spewed from Republican office holders, RWNJ blogs, so-called news sites and Fox News.
The once fringe idea that The President was foreign born, a secret Muslim, a possible sleeper agent, a black militant and a America hating Socialist went mainstream.The mainstreaming of once ridiculous,once fringe conspiracy theories has become a hallmark of the modern Republican Party. Had Dems met the day Bush was inaugurated to plan to obstruct they would have been in the dock being tried for sedition and treason.There was no investigation to find any criminal culpability in any of the Bush Administration's actions.
Faced with a problematic Senate the President was still able to accomplish a lot in the first half of his first term. The Affordable Care Act became the clarion call to the right to solidify opposition to any progressive agenda that was proposed. It has since become the most public face of Obama Derangement Syndrome. More about that later.
Following the President's election, hard as it is to believe, Fox News became even less connected to reality. Any person who had a conspiracy theory, any misrepresentation of the facts concerning any Presidential policy and supposed proof we were marching down the road to Socialism was given extensive airtime. We discovered there was a Federally mandated war on Religion. The Majority Religion in The United States felt they were being persecuted.
The Tea Party became the darlings of Fox News. They were treated as an actual, reasoning political force. They were a political force but without reason. Racist statements and views were downplayed  and denied. Bastardized inaccurate and out right lies were passed off as actual accepted history. America was depicted as being founded as a Christian nation contrary to facts stating the opposite. Quotes by the Founders were pulled out of context. Contradictory statements and letters were ignored. The role of slavery in American was woefully misrepresented. The radical underpinnings of the Revolution was being shown as only a taxation issue and a conservative movement. The Constitution was being interpreted as The Articles Of Confederation 2.0. The very existence of Federalism was being denied. I don't think a conservative movement has ever resulted in a Radical reformation of the world order.
More and more of the Tea Party was being elected to offices. Fox and others presented this as proof that the American political landscape is conservative. The usual denial of fact. These tea party activists have pushed the GOP farther and farther to the right. This is simply because of Primaries.
For decades the primary system has been dominated by the zealot on both sides. The true believers are the ones who work in campaigns, donate money and vote. The GOP Primaries were hijacked by the reactionary right. Any office holder who failed a purity test was purged in a challenge from the right. Any candidate that survived moved right to protect their political future. The major method of governing with two political parties, compromise. was vilified and denigrated as selling out.
Recent negotiations between the GOP controlled House and the White House has borne this out. The GOP position has been give us everything we want or we drive the nation over a cliff. These ideologues would rather burn down America rather than not get their way. In fact many see burning down our house as a good way to reach their political utopia.
Ideas,attitudes and beliefs that would have at one time been ridiculed are now considered to be a viable political philosophy. Willful ignorance is thought to be a path to election and reelection. It is seen as a pathway to the Presidency under the assumption ignorance is a virtue.
Jack Kennedy as a Catholic felt he had to speak to the concerns of Protestants that America wouldn't be ruled from Rome by the Pope. Today conservative evangelical views are worn by Republican candidates as a prerequisite to being an office holder. Let's forget this is the antithesis of two centuries of American political practice and thought.
We have people in power who reject the existence of the 21st Century. They reject evolution. They believe creationism should be taught as a viable scientific principle. They believe the Universe and Earth are the same age. 6,000 years. They deny human physiology as a liberal secular plot. Some decry science as lies from the pit of Hell. They believe their view of Christianity must be codified into law to prevent some Old Testament style smiting.
So we are seeing unprecedented denial of the world being signed into law. Pregnancy has been redefined. Women have been redefined from being humans and citizens into ambulatory incubators. A life support system for a fetus should be her role.
We need to run a modern society based on books and beliefs of a Bronze Age nomadic civilization. Women are property. They also are the reason for all sin and misery in the world. They are so seductive they force themselves to be raped. Women are disobedient harlots who need to be beaten into submission for their own and the world's good.
These good Christian who seek to rule every aspect of our lives and our very thoughts are vehemently opposed to any healthcare reform in their presence. Saving lives must be an affront to God. People without insurance who get sick are freeloaders. They should have been buying insurance all along. If you have a preexisting condition sorry. you know, free market. Rationing by ability to pay is what God and the founders wanted. So, the House sees fit to have forty repeal votes in a show of political theater. This way they can go home and say, look i'm trying but these Godless Democrats want to take away your freedom to deny healthcare to those you don't like.
Now these people are going to try to extort the repeal of the ACA in the budget negotiations and debt ceiling fight. They would rather shut down the government than admit they lost the last two elections. They refuse to admit that they were found wrong by the American electorate.
The right feels they have a God given mandate to establish a theocratic oligarchy. It appears they will stop at nothing to do it.
We have to stop them. Organize.
 Evangelize.
Help people get voter ID's.
Give rides to people to get them to the poll.
We have to stand against this tide of intolerance, hate and repression.  We must take our country back.
Stand.
Fight.