The Laser Must Need Cleaning

The charade isn't working. (4.00 / 5)

What will DJ do when he realizes that people just don't believe him anymore?

All he has to do is look at the polls to see that voters are fed up with the Republican Party leadership's lip service to the so-called jobs agenda (see the numbers here) and are probably going to take their anger out on the Republican Party in November (more here).

Northeast field communications staffer, AFL-CIO

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by: Nora F. @ Tue Feb 21, 2012 at 16:21:47 PM UTC

Hmmm... (4.00 / 1)

...Religious Freedom passed 13-5 and will be voted on by the house tomorrow.

Really? I thought Religious Freedom was already guaranteed in the (US) Constitution.

Oh, wait. That's religious freedom from government establishment/imposition of religion.

Cutting off funding for private behavior based on religious beliefs is not really establishing religion.

Silly me.

JillSH

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by: JillSH @ Tue Feb 21, 2012 at 17:23:16 PM UTC

We need to spam-filter these bills and CACRs. (0.00 / 0)

I'm worried that the crazy stuff that actually has a chance of passing will get lost in all the other crazy stuff that, at a minimum, won't pass a veto override vote.  

It's good to get the cannot-pass craziness out into the media, but at this point, it's not hard - enough cuckoos have now been spotted in the NH forests that the national media know it's good hunting.  I think the Magna Carta bill and the birther BLC ruckus pushed it over the edge.

So if someone thinks they can reliably predict whether a particular nutcase bill/CACR is DOA, please do so for the rest of us.  After seeing some of the stuff that's gotten through, I often have no clue anymore.

As far as CACRs go, maybe it might be better if some of the wackier but relatively harmless ones with no chance of voter mandate would get on the ballot, just to remind people of what voting for Baldasaro, et al, means.

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by: The Money Magician @ Tue Feb 21, 2012 at 18:45:08 PM UTC

I guess I don't view (0.00 / 0)

the ongoing war on women's reproductive autonomy as unimportant or "relatively harmless."  

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by: susanthe @ Tue Feb 21, 2012 at 18:56:54 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

The resolution is a meaningless, self-embarassing spitball, (0.00 / 0)

a sound and a fury signifying nothing, and, along with the rest of the similar folderol happening at the national level, stripping the Right of women's support.

If anything, this is forcing both men and women to make a stand that never thought of this as their issue before.  For instance, late last year I donated to Planned Parenthood - the first time in my long male life.

So... what's not to like?  Seriously, if they want to continue to do this kind of politically suicidal stuff, it's fine by me.  It just means that the date when they'll be gone from power is sooner and more certain.

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by: The Money Magician @ Wed Feb 22, 2012 at 02:14:40 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

that may be (4.00 / 2)

but it's one more attack on women - and the attacks are coming with increasing speed from Concord and from Washington, DC.

I'm trying hard not to be pissy about your "it's fine by me"  cavalier attitude about this stuff. I care. All of the women I know care. We know that the incremental gains we've made over the last few centuries can be taken away from us at any moment. And sadly, those of us who are honest also know that  many of our supposed male allies will sell us down the river in a heartbeat over an issue they consider important.

If you had a uterus, you might not be so blithe.  

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by: susanthe @ Wed Feb 22, 2012 at 02:29:07 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

So... you really think this resolution will help their cause? (4.00 / 1)

It seems to me to be self-destructive.  I'm not cavalier about the issue - I'm gleeful at the way the people trying to push the attack are actually doing the opposite - IMO, anyway.  They could be doing real damage, for instance, if they hadn't dragged contraception into it.

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by: The Money Magician @ Wed Feb 22, 2012 at 02:44:01 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Well. even if it is self-destructive, people who care about other (0.00 / 0)

people get upset when they witness self-destructive behavior. The advantage the self-centered have is that they either don't care about other people's welfare or greet their discomfort with (barely suppressed) glee.  

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by: hannah @ Wed Feb 22, 2012 at 10:28:18 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

I think you are reading wildly out of context. (0.00 / 0)

When I say "self-destructive", I mean acting in opposition to the cause they espouse - in other words, instead of acting to restrict reproductive rights, actually acting in support of them.  I am not referring to personal self-destructiveness.

But I'm clearly touching a nerve on this, so I'll shut up now.

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by: The Money Magician @ Wed Feb 22, 2012 at 13:06:21 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

You can afford to be gleeful (4.00 / 1)

You don't have a uterus, therefore you don't live in fear. That's all I'm trying to get through to you.

I remember life before Roe v. Wade. I watched a classmate be pregnant in high school in 1971, when it was a huge taboo. She couldn't get an abortion, and her mother was a single parent who couldn't afford to send her away. People treated her like dirt. It was horrible.

Roe v. Wade and contraception have been the means to further propel women toward equality. The Christian Taliban men who are running our country and our state would like very much to return us to the days before either were available - to reduce us to the status of chattel that we enjoyed back in the 1800's. And before you accuse me of drama and hyperbole, ask any of the other women who post here if THEY think I'm over dramatizing. Our fear is real, and it's justified.

For those of us who are uterus bearing, this is just one more step toward The Handmaid's Tale.

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by: susanthe @ Wed Feb 22, 2012 at 23:38:50 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I'm with you, Susan! (4.00 / 1)

I was in front of the State House this morning with a sign that said FIGHTING FOR WOMEN'S RIGHTS - ALL OVER AGAIN!  There are men who understand how terrifying this is, thank goodness, and they will support their mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, nieces and friends.  It's not just contraception, it's seeing us as bodies, instead of people.  Things to be used and controlled.  Corporations are now people, but women...not so much.  

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by: Lucy Edwards @ Thu Feb 23, 2012 at 18:05:13 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

"Our Bodies Ourselves" (4.00 / 1)

I can remember when abortions were performed in secret on kitchen tables with no anesthetic.  Women were sent home to recuperate as best they could.  These were called "Back Alley Abortions" and women often bled to death following one rather than go to a hospital.  If you did get to a hospital the only way to save your life was often to remove what might be left of your uterus making you unable to have children, ever.  This was considered a fair punishment for having gotten pregnant "without benefit of clergy" in the first place.

I remember the Sophia Little Home not far from where I grew up.  This was a place "disgraced" young women were sent to await the birth of their babies who were then immediately removed from them, and given to waiting couples who wanted children but could not have their own.  The young mother was then discharged and told to get on with her life and forget about the child she had just given birth to.  Often the boy/man who fathered the child did not even know about the pregnancy.  Many of the adults now looking for their birth mothers come from experiences such as this.

I remember being about 9 or 10 years old and hearing about people being sent to jail for telling women about contraception.  My Dad explained that it was against the law to give women contraceptives because it was woman's primary job to marry and have babies.  It was to be my job too.  The seeds of social justice were planted that day.

Women who were born after contraceptives were make legal and after Roe V Wade, have always lived in a world where contraceptives were normal and where abortion was available.  Old White Men in particular, (but not always "OWM") would like to turn back the clock to those days and control women by controlling a woman's ability to procreate.  But then, men's fear of woman's ability to procreate has been with us since the time of the caveman.  Ask us, those of us born in the late '30s. the '40s and the '50s what we remember.  Young women need to know this story!  It is their story too and far too many do not know it!  If today's women knew our stories they would pour into the streets and surround every government building and demand that the government "TRUST WOMEN" to know what we want and need.  We do not need what is being shoved at us by any church or any government attempting to control our bodies!  We need outrage!!!!

"It is true that the law can't change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless."  Martin Luther King

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by: cyndychase @ Fri Feb 24, 2012 at 04:12:37 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Not only "Old White Men" (4.00 / 1)

Lynn Blankenbeker (R-Concord) and Pamela Tucker (R-Greenland) have been leading the charge against contraception, choice, and women's health care in general. They were joined by Jennifer Coffey (R-Andover) who testified at yesterday's hearing that despite her personal gynecological health issues, she doesn't think contraceptives should be covered.  

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by: Jennifer Daler @ Fri Feb 24, 2012 at 13:19:47 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

there always seem to be those women (4.00 / 1)

who think they'll somehow be exempt from the contempt the men they work with have for them.

Blankenbeker, Tucker, and Coffey don't seem to understand that they are where they are, because women fought and died to get them the right to own property, money, sign contracts, and vote. Men didn't just willingly hand all that stuff over. Women were beaten up in public by men, imprisoned, and tortured in jail - so that they can vote against their fellow women. Our suffragist foremothers brought us as far as they could. Contraception and the right to bodily autonomy/privacy have helped move women even  closer to equality. These women would set us back, out of some peculiar sycophantic need to be one of the boyz.

They sicken me even more than the men do.  

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by: susanthe @ Fri Feb 24, 2012 at 13:31:51 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

religious freedom ???? or individual rights...maybe someone can read her statement into the record on the floor of the house (0.00 / 0)

"As a former employee of a Catholic-run hospital, I find it appalling that the party of 'individual rights' would stand up for a religious bias rather than for the non-Catholic employees who are deprived of the right to choose health insurance commensurate with the private needs and beliefs.  Why should I not be allowed birth control through my insurance because my boss has a problem with it?" - Nurse Kris Long (writing in the NY Times)

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by: political chowder @ Wed Feb 22, 2012 at 00:11:26 AM UTC

To answer her question: (0.00 / 0)

Because employers are, like parents, considered to be part of the social hierarchy whose function is to enforce obedience in subordinates.  Having a veto over an individual's access to medical care, in addition to controlling the currency required to purchase sustenance, insures that compliance is virtually automatic. If workers can decide on their own hook they are ill and get medical professionals to back them up, then the employer's power is not absolute.
For people addicted to power, the hierarchy is more important than anything else. Controlling money is not enough; they also have to control people's lives.

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by: hannah @ Wed Feb 22, 2012 at 10:35:04 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

fast tracked (0.00 / 0)

For some reason--- and I am not sure what rational explanation there could possibly be for this---  the Speaker & his crew fast-tracked HR 29.  They hastily called an executive session at 8:30am Tuesday morning, so HR 29 could be on the Wednesday, February 22 calendar.  That calendar already had 104 bills on it.

I don't see anything very urgent about this resolution, which is any case just a resolution which is not binding on anyone.


sitting state rep: running for re-election in 2012.

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by: TimothyHorrigan @ Wed Feb 22, 2012 at 02:47:07 AM UTC

Good look searching for "rational" with that crew! n/t (4.00 / 1)

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by: dooper @ Wed Feb 22, 2012 at 03:06:29 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

The fierce urgency of now. (4.00 / 2)

There is currently a massive nationwide hullaballoo over the gall of wimminfolks expecting decent lady insurance coverage from businesses that are indirectly controlled by men who have taken the Pledge against any broad-based intercourse.

The ability of Speaker O'Brien and his fellow travelers to bamboozle significant numbers of people into seeing this as a constitution-shredding existential threat to America's precious essence has an expiration date, however, and the Speaker realizes that a delay until next Wednesday might mean that the issue would sour beyond anyone's ability to swallow it.

This is why Representatives had to be summoned -- and paid for their mileage -- from Londonderry, Concord, Hudson, Sunapee, Laconia, Somersworth, Conway, Merrimack, Middleton, Manchester, Claremont, and freakin' Berlin to an 8:30am meeting on a day when the committee had absolutely no other business to conduct: so the Speaker's twee little bit of wingnut bric-a-brac could be approved in time to post an addendum to the calendar that day, allowing it to be voted on the next day, which could be a real feather in O'Brien's cap on the national scene, while voting on it a week later -- after the entire electorate was bored of it and/or realized it to be a crock and the Fox/TeaParty/Romgrinchtorum floating offense-taking festival had moved on to, oh, let's say, Interior Department-funded lesbian badger habitat preservation -- could be a real black eye for the little man who struggles every day against the knowledge that in ten months, he will be seated between Reps. Kingsbury and Christiansen in the middle of a row, blamed by every Republican, laughed at by every Democrat, and feared by no one at all.

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by: Tim C. @ Wed Feb 22, 2012 at 06:09:57 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

actually (0.00 / 0)

I suspect that in ten months, Robert Kingsbury & Bill O'Brien will both be former reps.  (Lars Christiansen will probably be re-elected.)


sitting state rep: running for re-election in 2012.

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by: TimothyHorrigan @ Wed Feb 22, 2012 at 10:06:55 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Since this is an open thread-- (0.00 / 0)

there's some "interesting" information on this site
http://www.p2012.org/candidate...

Are we aware, for example, that Mike Biundo is the manager of Santorum's campaign on the strength of having

played key roles in Frank Guinta's successful campaigns for Congress in 2010 and for Mayor of Manchester in 2005 and 2007.  He worked on Jim Coburn's unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign in 2006 and as a consultant to former Gov. Pataki's 21st Century Freedom State PAC.  State representative, Ward 8, Manchester, 2004-06; defeated in re-election bid.  With Jack Heath, he acquired NSP Graphics and co-founded Meridian Communications in 2003, which they ran in the mid-2000s.  President of Atlantic Strategies Group, 1998-2000.  Executive director, Gun Owners of New Hampshire, 1997-98.  New Hampshire deputy campaign manager of Buchanan for President, 1995-96.

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by: hannah @ Wed Feb 22, 2012 at 10:44:44 AM UTC

Yep, Guinta's brain. (3.00 / 1)

Seeing how much Guinta consulted him whenever he was out in public, you sometimes wondered if Frank needed his permission to pee.

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by: The Money Magician @ Thu Feb 23, 2012 at 01:50:40 AM UTC

[ Parent ]