Like a lady…

Let’s jump right on in, shall we?

Yesterday, Todd Akin indulged in another public statement of what conservatives prefer to keep private.

Akin got in the way of his own attempt at post-debate spin when he said McCaskill was more “ladylike” during her debate in 2006.

Yep.

For real.

Way!

Now, some folk are hyper-focusing on Akin’s use of the term “ladylike”…and I get that, because that shit well known code for a woman who doesn’t race barefoot to the kitchen after folding some assholes shirts.

I’m more interested in Akin’s entire verbal malfunction, because it speaks to his deep-seated dislike of women.

"I think we have a very clear path to victory, and apparently Claire McCaskill thinks we do, too, because she was very aggressive at the debate, which was quite different than it was when she ran against Jim Talent."

"She had a confidence and was much more ladylike, but in the debate on Friday she came out swinging, and I think that's because she feels threatened."

Fascinating use of misogynist code!

Translation...

Men who “come out swinging” display strength and conviction.

Women who do the same are aggressive, defensive, and…wait for it…unladylike.

Cough.

You know and I know that Akin’s resume is so chock full of extremism that anyone running against him has to jump right up in that kitchen and take over lest Akin dodge his public statements in favor of the diluted freak juice Team Akin thinks they can sneak past Missouri voters.

Methinks Todd Akin spent way too much time of his bus getting advice from a certain submission-is-for-you-but-not-for-me Phyllis Schlafly.

I’m betting that Senator McCaskill is operating on the political reality that well-behaved women rarely make history.

And odds are that's why Akin is so distressed.

He sure as shit is in it, but Missouri can not afford for his throw-back ass to win it.

***logs off to go make some unladylike social change***

He’s in it…but we can’t afford for him to win it…

Shall we?

Another deadline has passed and Republican Congressman Todd Akin is still in the race to represent Missouri in the US Senate.

40 odd days to go, y’all...and this is going to be one wild and crazy ride!

Lawd, give me strength.

Anyhoo, I can’t help pondering Akin’s infamous “legitimate rape” comment.

I know, I know…he’s apologized and tried to brush it off as a verbal malfunction.

But…well, that’s the thing that’s taxing my Afro.

After he realized that folks were disgusted and disturbed by his claim that women’s bodies have a way of preventing pregnancy from resulting from “legitimate rape”, Akin acknowledged that his bizarre theory came from some freakish conservative source.

So, Akin actually didn’t misspeak. 

Up until August 19, 2012, Todd Akin thought women’s bodies could “shut down” a pregnancy resulting from rape if that rape was “legitimate.”

As Akin likes to point out, he’s the husband to one, father to six, and grandfather to seven…and he's spent 65 years of life not knowing how pregnancy works.

65 years of life believing that women who became pregnant as a result of rape were lying.

Todd Akin may be running for a Senate seat, but he's been sitting in the United States House and played key roles in drafting legislation seeking to redefine rape and deny women access to the full range of reproductive health care.

And, if we take Akin at his word, until August 19 of this year he thought some rape was legitimate and other rape was bullshit…that some women deserved care and other women deserved scorn and restrictions.

If that’s not bad enough, Akin also has radical views about student loans, social security, the Voting Rights Act, and Medicare.

I can’t even imagine what junk science he’s basing that shit on.

Akin may be in it…but we sure as shit can’t afford for his bizarre radical fringe ass to win it.

Blink.

A quick note on fast food politics…

I just read the news that a certain Chick-fil-A plans to halt donations to groups that advance policies that would limit the rights and liberty of LGBT people.

I’m sure that there are folks who are encouraged and blah, blah, followed by blah.

But the reality is that Chick-fil-A showed that their flawed value having kitchen is filthy and I’m not going to forget that shit just because they are now saying they won’t allow filth mongers back there anymore. 

Fuck ‘em.

Since fast food companies have started to come out as ig’nant, I’ve discovered many a progressive local eatery where I can score a tasty sandwich without lining the pockets of some bigot who you know and I know will make a private donation to anti-equality groups and candidates to offset the donations Chick-fil-A is sorta-claiming they’re no longer going to make.

In my ‘hood I recommend The Poly at Shameless Grounds and the Grilled Chicken Breast at MoKaBe’s.

Those are two of my favorite local joints where y'all can score yummified goodness minus the bitter metallic aftertaste of social conservative bullshit.

Bon appetit!

A guest post by the one and only C-Money - I'm a pissed off hockey fan.

The NHL has cancelled preseason games through the end of the month and my sister C-Money has had ENOUGH!

Tell it, sistah!

A guest post from C-Money...

I'm a pissed off hockey fan.

That asshole Gary Bettman stood Godfather to this season, but all along he knew he was gonna kill it. He looked us in the eye, kissed us on the cheek and sent his goons out to whack the season.

My Blues are looking at Europe, skating stoically out in Chesterfield or getting ready to play for Peoria when they belong right here.

In St. Louis.

At Scottrade.

They didn't ask for this war!

I'm paying just enough attention to know that the current collective bargaining agreement is the one the NHL locked them out to get. So it can't suck that much.

They can't be that far apart.

And in a union fight the lib-lab lefty in me stands behind labor.

If the players are mad as hell and aren't gonna take it anymore, I say stand firm while you have the muscle. Keep working out and get prison hard while The Man thinks he's got you on lockdown brothas!

Cuz when the season starts, we'll be there.

Let's. Go. Blues.

So, about Romney’s Latino “joke”…

I’ve noticed that the press has dodged addressing some of the other shit Mitt Romney was caught saying to donors, like his attempted joke that he’d have a better shot at winning the presidency as a Latino.

"My dad, as you probably know, was the governor of Michigan and was the head of a car company. But he was born in Mexico ... and had he been born of Mexican parents, I'd have a better shot at winning this. But he was unfortunately born to Americans living in Mexico. He lived there for a number of years. I mean, I say that jokingly, but it would be helpful to be Latino."

Oh, some major news outlets have covered it. Ruben Navarrette Jr. has this post up on CNN.com, so odds are the producers over there have scratched that off of their to-do list.

But most anchors and reporters have opted to clumsily fumble through explanations of who pays income taxes and blah, blah, blah instead of tackling the other gaffe Mitt made that evening in the Hamptons.

 

See, the same thing that would have made Mitt’s joke score some laughs (if he hadn’t fucked up the punch line) is the exact same thing that makes anchors and reporters uncertain whether his Latino comments will result in any real political damage.

The thing?

There is a widely held belief that being a minority has guaranteed advantages for those seeking any sort of advancement.

I’ve personally encountered that shit.  I’ll never forget having an academically challenged friend respond to news that my sister was accepted at Harvard with a “joke” that he should paint his face black and apply too.  Everybody at the table laughed…except me. More than one friendship ended that day.

I was disappointed, but not surprised.

Just as I’m disappointed but not at all surprised that so many anchors and reporters have avoided discussing Romney’s Latino “joke”.

If Romney’s callous disregard for the struggles working people face and his boorishly stated belief that 47 percent of us see ourselves as victims are seen as troublesome, then Romney’s crass "joke" about the political benefits to be had simply from being born Latino sure as shit is too.

***cue crickets***

Blink.

By Request: Some thoughts on the “47 million Americans” public display of private buffoonery…

I had the pleasure of witnessing the latest Mitt Romney verbal malfunction unfold with a certain C-Money.  We were hanging out in our couch-based lair, checking Twitter and dropping snark for hours.

Good times!

For those who missed it, Mother Jones broke a story complete with secret video (oooh, damn near Nixonian!) of how Mitt Romney talks about the masses when he thinks he’s among like-minded uber rich folk.

By “masses”, I mean the 47 million Americans he was caught on tape saying he could give a flying fuck about. 

Mitt thinks we’re lazy and dependent on government. Oh, and he also thinks we don’t pay taxes.

Pause…frown…continue.

Yeah, that bit about the taxes made my Afro hurt too, until I realized that discussing regular people paying taxes with Mitt Romney would be like chatting about how expensive groceries are with [insert any Romney here].

Odds are Mitt Romney hasn’t bothered to learn how payroll taxes work because he never had any intention of keep workers on the payroll long enough to be taxed.

Anyhoo, at some point I mentioned how Lee Atwater would have handled Romney’s late night press conference…and that’s when C-Money demanded a post on this shit.

So, here are my thoughts.

Current conservative politics makes me kind of miss Lee Atwater.

Watch it….watch it, damn it…catch that knee before you hurt somebody!

I’m serious.

Lee Atwater was a dirty motherfucker…so dirty he was a master at modern political dirt distribution…but at least he was good at that shit.

When Atwater race-baited your ass, his hook had some serious unambiguous rancid ass bait on it. Lee put together campaigns that hit their mark with painful accuracy…causing outrage on the side he could give a shit about and inspiring cheers from the group he wanted to hear cheering.  Atwater was up in the head of the voters he needed to get the job done…the job being to get [insert conservative nightmare here] elected.

Now, we’ve got Mitt Romney fumbling through fundraising talks trying to be all delicate about saying that if he were Latino he’d have an easy time winning the presidency…after trying to arouse his bored as shit audience with watered down digs at 47 percent of the nation!

Mitt has insulted half the nation and managed to do so with such lame assedness that his base couldn’t be bothered to shrug.

This is just…disturbing.

Okay, okay…so I don’t actually want to see the second coming of Lee Atwater. 

One life-cycle of Lee was more than enough, thank you.

*wince*

But if someone is going to pander to the baser needs of his base…and if doing so requires race-baiting elite ass dismissive comments about voters…hell, if a candidate is going to take his campaign from zero to absolute FUBAR in record breaking time the least he can do is make that shit interesting.

Hell, even the man’s scandals are like over baked flounder.

Gawd, what I wouldn't do for a Demon Sheep or two...

Blink.

Locked out…

The NHL has locked out players after the CBA expired over the weekend.

***sobs***

Anyone who knows me knows that I adore hockey and get a lot of joy out of the NHL season.  Thanks to a fantabulous year last year for my beloved Blues, I also got a hell of a lot of joy out of the post-season!

But NHL hockey requires NHL hockey players…and they deserve a fair deal since they are the ones giving the faithful something to cheer about.

I’m just hoping for a quick, fair, and long lasting resolution.

***sends offering up to the hockey gods***

(Update) 26 Senators and 109 Representatives…

UPDATE: I mentioned that Missouri was fixin to go to court after the General Assembly passed Senator Lamping’s rancid birth control refusal bill.

Well, I was right.

This Missourian thanks the Greater Kansas City Coalition of Labor Union Women and Michele Newby, president of the coalition and a firefighter in Kansas City, for filing suit Wednesday to challenge the birth control refusal bill!

Someone ought to keep track of how much money Missouri is going to spend defending Senator Lamping’s legislative pander to the Missouri Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Pause…consider…continue.

Lamping’s birth control refusal law empowers government to take rights from workers and step all up in folk’s bedrooms.  Lamping’s Law basically has government deciding that anyone who takes birth control forfeits their rights to their employer.

AND the damn thing is going to cost the state some serious cash.

If it walks like it and talks like it, we should call it what it is…an expensive, ill advised, intellectually lazy, big government, theocratic shake-down.

_______________________________________________

Let’s jump right on in, shall we?

I went to bed mad as hell…

….and woke up wishing that Missourians could feel the full weight of what the Missouri Assembly just did.

The Missouri Assembly had their veto session Wednesday, September 12.  They took up Senator Lamping’s Birth Control Refusal bill SB749.

The Senate took less time to override Governor Nixon’s veto than they spent unveiling a portrait earlier in the day.

The House cut off debate lest they hear just how trifling this rancid bill is and then the peer pressure began.

But wait…let me back up.

Before debate was cut off, (and that was so cowardly weak I can’t even tell you) several Representatives stood up to speak out against overriding the veto.  I listened live and recognized the voices of a few.  Then a woman started speaking and I couldn’t tell who it was.  I took to Twitter because some people were live tweeting the debate and…well, suffice it say I was SHOCKED that Representative Linda Black (D-107) was speaking out in favor of sustaining the veto.

Rep. Black, who is solidly opposed to abortion rights, spoke in favor of sustaining the veto because she is solidly opposed to abortion.  Black, unlike the majority under the dome, acknowledged the fact that restricting access to birth control results in more unplanned pregnancies and thus more abortions. 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – folks who are opposed to abortion who then turn around and try to deny access to birth control can not, do not, and will not make a lick of sense… not that most folk working under the dome in Jefferson City fret about making sense or doing the right thing.

I disagree with Rep. Black on abortion…but she sure as hell has the courage of her convictions and shamed the cowards when she stood up yesterday.

109 of her colleagues voted yes and the veto was overturned.

SB749 will now be law, so supporters can cease bullshitting to the masses about what they just did. 

Any employer…any employer…any damned employer in the state of Missouri will now be able to provide an insurance package devoid of contraception or sterilization coverage because that employer has some sort of moral objection.

The law is certain to be challenged in court by insurance companies who opposed the hell out of it.

That’s what I woke up pondering and regretting.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the way to address the rot in Jefferson City is for the masses to feel the ache.

In this case, the thousands of Missourians who use birth control and take insurance coverage for granted need to have that coverage revoked.  They need to hear their employer explain his or her religious objection during their annual plan meeting…and then they need to get royally fucked over each month for 12 consecutive months until the next plan meeting.

But they won’t…because Missouri is fixin’ to go to court.  We just haven’t been served papers yet.

26 Senators.

109 Representatives.

Hit the lights.

Take a fucking bow.

Blink.

Ice cream for breakfast…

My father died in 1998 and it is still hard to say that he is gone.  

We had some great moments and several years of painful drama, but I take comfort that we were on solid ground when he took his final walk down Michigan Ave in Chicago and died of a heart attack.

It took several years for me to realize that the pain of his loss will be a constant companion.

It took even longer for me to welcome those unexpected tugs…from driving by a hardware store and remembering how fun it was to help out with small repairs to walking down grocery store aisles and recalling my father’s intense focus on food brought on by a childhood spent in hunger.

I miss my father every single day.

And every now…without setting a schedule or planning it all out…I pause in remembrance and do something that I know would make my father smile.

I eat a giant bowl of ice cream for breakfast.

Yep, ice cream.

Because my father once lied to some mean-girls at my grade school and told them that everyone who comes over to our house for a sleep-over gets ice cream for breakfast.  I can still see the look of awe on their faces…can still feel the giggle working through my body…I still feel adoration for my father for knowing exactly what to say to those girls I so desperately wanted to impress.

Later, my father told me that only silly people follow silly rules and deny themselves ice cream when they want it.

If he were still with us, he would sit down next to me and dig into that ice cream with gusto.

I always add an extra scoop just for him.

Far too many people know the constant companionship of loss.

I know that they probably feel those unexpected tugs too.

And I hope that they also pause and do something special to remember…

…even if it is something as ridiculously perfect as inhaling a huge bowl of ice cream at 7 o’clock in the morning.

ICYMI: Kansas City Bishop Finn was found guilty for not reporting sex abuse

I’ve watched coverage of the trial of Kansas City Bishop Robert Finn, because the case is so disturbing.

Here’s a timeline of case. 

A warning…the lack of urgency, compassion for victims, and due diligence will likely turn your stomach.

Bishop Finn is the first sitting United States bishop to be criminally charged for covering up child sexual abuse.

On Thursday he was found guilty on one count. 

Finn has been given a suspended sentence of two years of probation and will be required to undergo training for reporting suspected abuse.

This story didn’t make the morning news…

…but it should have.

Blink.

As we go forward…

Happy Friday, y’all!

Shall we?

Last night President Obama accepted the nomination of his party and made the case why voters should cast a ballot for him to remain in office for a second term.

Today we get to work.

Politics is still local and elections are still won or lost on the ground. 

Most states have races that should have every registered voter fired up and ready to go.  The contrasts couldn’t be greater…and the stakes couldn’t be higher.

So get up in the business of people you know…ask them if they are registered to vote and make sure they know how important this election is.  Find out if you live in a voter id state and, if you do, make sure everyone you know understands what that means.   

Ask them if they have a state issued id…and, if they don’t, help them get one.

Better safe than a victim of a poll tax revival come November.

We’ve got 60 days to go, y’all.

Let’s do this!

***logs off and prepares to fight***

Quick hits…

By request – September…

Happy September, y’all!

A certain Melissa from New Haven asked that I republish a post about my brother’s former favorite song, September. Her roommate recommended it and she couldn’t find it.

Here’s the link, Melissa -> http://angryblackbitch.blogspot.com/2006/06/by-request-september.html

Enjoy!

An NHL fret…

I’m emerging from the Labor Day holiday full of fretful thoughts over the NHL labor dispute that has now entered the countdown phase and could fuck up the season. I noticed some fans berating players on Twitter and…well, that’s not the route I’d go.  Seriously, fussing at players who are resisting what appears to be a money grab by owners for a bigger share of increased revenues that are the result of the players labor strikes me as intellectually lazy.

Catch that knee!

I’m as eager for hockey as anyone.  But I know that the history of professional hockey is littered with players getting screwed…I’m a Blues fan because of the team, not the people in suits…and the only people more motivated to see skates hit ice than my ass are NHL hockey players.

So I stand with the players even as I offer hourly prayers to the hockey gods.

On whether I’m better off today than I was four years ago…

Apparently, the campaign trail has heated up post GOP convention with the Republican challenge that voters ponder the question of whether we’re better off today than we were four years ago.

My answer?

Yes.

I’m serious.

Four years ago I, like all Americans, had a damn near mortal economic wound and didn’t even know it! 

We had an election and no one told me about it.

And then the market was crashing…the economy was in a nosedive…and we were on the brink of The Great Depression Round 2.

Four years ago, the nation experienced the equivalent of returning home after leaving a teen alone at home for the first time.  Some of us knew that the teen wasn’t ready, but we were overruled by the damned majority.  So leave the unready teen in charge we did…and then we returned home, hoping for the best but thinking we were prepared for the worse.  

But we underestimated just how much fucking up a veteran fuck up can accomplish in 8 years...and woke up to that harsh reality during the transition from Bush to Obama.

The question of whether I’m better off today than I was four years ago is easy to answer.

I mean, you’d have to be completely out of touch and desperate with it to decide to remind my voting ass that the last CEO in Chief left the nation facing a situation that was damn near FUBAR…

…or perhaps Romney/Ryan is betting on benefiting from the short-term memory of American voters like Bush the II did in 2004.

***shudders***

Anyhoo, this week brings the DNC in Charlotte and then the games really begin! 

Toodles.