Category: i’m just a girl

Holy Healthcare, Bushman!

Why can’t it be January 21st, 2009 already? (I know that whole space-time continuum thing)

George W. Bush wants healthcare workers (including anyone, even a receptionist booking appointments) to be able to deny you healthcare based upon their religious/moral/ethical beliefs. Not on your need or legally protected right but their beliefs. I (and the readers of this blog) am well aware that states already provide for this in the case of pharmacists, doctors and nurses. Now the Bushman wants to extend this to any employee of a healthcare company and not require the individual to declare their objection prior to hiring/scheduling/working.

My real point here is with everything this healthcare system already does to deny healthcare to those who need it, why is our government working to provide new ways to disenfranchise those who need it? But when the Republican candidtate doesn’t believe that pregnancy is really dangerous, are any of us really surprised?

Today, I surprised myself…

With the end of the Democratic Party primary, I took some time today to review two speeches (Hilary Clinton’s concession & Barack Obama’s St. Paul, MN, address). I listened to Senator Clinton’s speech first because of 2 major factors: 1) The meme going about that somehow Senator Clinton’s die-hard supporters could vote for McCain and 2) The months-long barrage of sexist attacks made upon the senator by the right-wing noise machine that ended up being echoed by the MSM.

Continue reading “Today, I surprised myself…”

Not “Yellow”-Bellied

I know that I should be writing about how happy I am that Karl Rove is leaving–but isn’t it obvious? Instead, I had to share this. I kinda love this woman.

Karaoke singer attacked after starting song
Woman punches man on stage
By HECTOR CASTRO
P-I REPORTER

It could have been the Coldplay song “Yellow” that upset the patron of a Wallingford neighborhood bar. Or perhaps it was the karaoke singer who belted it out.

Employees at Changes, on North 45th Street, said they don’t know, but the ensuing melee just past 1 a.m. Thursday was one unlike anything seen at the bar before.

As soon as the man on stage started singing about the stars in his best Chris Martin impersonation, the woman reportedly said: “Oh, no, not that song. I can’t stand that song!”

Witnesses said her distaste for Coldplay quickly took a violent turn, and she leaped at the would-be crooner, shouting expletives and telling him that his singing “sucked,” while expressing the same opinion of the song, according to a Seattle police report.

She pushed the man and punched him, all in an effort to stop his singing.

Other patrons went to the singer’s aid and hauled the 21-year-old woman outside.

“It took three or four of us to hold her down,” said Robert Willmette, one of the bartenders at Changes.

The woman, Willmette said, “went crazy” when she got outside, punching him twice in the face, and throwing blows at the others gathered around her.

But the person who drew most of the music critic’s ire was an off-duty Seattle police officer. The off-duty officer identified herself as a cop, gave her badge number and had another patron call 911 to request help for an officer.

The response was fast and overwhelming, with both patrol officers and Gang Unit detectives converging on the normally tame neighborhood bar.

“They blocked the whole street off,” Willmette said.

According to the police report, the woman’s rage only grew when the uniformed officers arrived.

The officers took the woman, whom Willmette described as “a little hippie girl,” to the ground, but she was still able to head butt the off-duty officer several times before she was handcuffed.

After treatment for injuries she suffered in the scuffle, the woman was booked into the King County Jail for investigation of assault. She was also held on a warrant issued for a previous theft charge.

The off-duty officer also went to the hospital, for treatment of several cuts, scrapes and bruises.

Later Thursday morning, bar employees were shaking their heads over the woman’s bizarre behavior.

According to the night bartender’s notes, she had just one drink — a single shot of Jägermeister.

She didn’t appear to be one of the regulars who flock to the bar for its karaoke nights on Sundays and Wednesdays.

Most are regulars who come for the pleasure of the singing, and the police are rarely needed.

“She was just crazy,” Willmette said.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/327017_karaoke10.html

Unexpected Loophole

Get a load of this:

Cecelia Fire Thunder, a former nurse who is the first female president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, said it was “an eye-opener” when legislators approved a law that prohibits abortion in nearly all cases, even when the pregnancy is the product of a rape or incest. The only exception is to save the mother’s life.

“An Indian reservation is a sovereign nation and we’re going to take it as far as we can to exercise our sovereignty,” said Fire Thunder, whose Pine Ridge Reservation encompasses 2.7 million acres in southwestern South Dakota. “As Indian women, we fight many battles. This is just another battle we have to fight.”

Because federally recognized tribes are not, in many cases, required to abide by state law, a clinic could operate lawfully at Pine Ridge even with a ban in place, said South Dakota Attorney General Larry Long.

The entire article is here.

On Target

I’m just going to paste the mail I got from Target here in its entirety and ask this question: Does this mean I can’t shop at Target anymore?

Dear Target Guest;

In our ongoing effort to provide great service to our guests, Target consistently ensures that prescriptions for the emergency contraceptive Plan B are filled. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 also requires us to accommodate our team members’ sincerely held religious beliefs.

In the rare event that a pharmacist’s beliefs conflict with filling a guest’s prescription for the emergency contraceptive Plan B, our policy requires our pharmacists to take responsibility for ensuring that the guest’s prescription is filled in a timely and respectful manner, either by another Target pharmacist or a different pharmacy.

The emergency contraceptive Plan B is the only medication for which this policy applies. Under no circumstances can the pharmacist prevent the prescription from being filled, make discourteous or judgmental remarks, or discuss his or her religious beliefs with the guest.

Target abides by all state and local laws and, in the event that other laws conflict with our policy, we follow the law.

We’re surprised and disappointed by Planned Parenthood’s negative campaign. We’ve been talking with Planned Parenthood to clarify our policy and reinforce our commitment to ensuring that our guests’ prescriptions for the emergency contraceptive Plan B are filled. Our policy is similar to that of many other retailers and follows the recommendations of the American Pharmacists Association. That’s why it’s unclear why Target is being singled out.

We’re committed to meeting the needs of our female guests and will continue to deliver upon that commitment.

Sincerely,
Jennifer Hanson
Target Executive Offices

Put this man out of my misery

For every man (or every woman) that thinks they have the one, true answer to the abortion issue I say back the f*ck off. Choice and privacy are a lot more complicated than you would like to think. If I have to listen to one more white man tell me that they know best for my body and my life, I am really going to have to start hurting people. Unfortunately for me, the idiots won’t shut up:

In the book, Santorum makes the case that abortion puts the liberty rights of the mother before those of her child, just as the rights of slave owners were put before those of slaves.

“This was tried once before in America,” Santorum writes. “But unlike abortion today, in most states even the slaveholder did not have the unlimited right to kill his slave.”(after all wanton destruction of valuable property was/is considered a crime )

So now, being pro-choice means I am pro slavery? Children are equivalent to antebellum slaves? Actually, this Pennsylvania Senator of dubious mental health has it all wrong. Taking my reproductive choice away makes me and all women the slaves in a conservative Christian America. But, of course, this is a convenient reference to Dred Scott v. Sandford that made people in the north and in the territories fear that the courts and the Constitution would be used to force a state to accept slavery within its borders. The Right uses this decision to fan the flames of hatred for the courts and the supremacy of Roe over state level legislation.

Choice does not mean that every woman has to have an abortion. Lots of women choose to bring their pregnancy to term. Some of those women risk their lives doing it. But they choose to do it. Have a child, don’t have a child – I don’t care. All I care is whether you have the choice.

Violence, Wingnuts and the Multinational Corporation

In the United States , according to The National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence Against Women, one in four women is directly affected by domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and/or stalking. In September of this year the Violence Against Women Act will expire. It has been introduced for renewal and one would hope that Congress manages to get to it before their summer break. Although the bill does have its detractors:

Congress knows that the 25 million American men of marriageable age refuse to marry and take on the risk and responsibility of raising children precisely because of the draconian provisions in legislation like VAWA. They understand precisely how such legislation makes marriage a hostile environment for any man, and they know that this left 21 million potential wives and single mothers alone at the altar, quintupling our illegitimacy rate to two-out-of-every-five childbirths. They know that a father whose family is destroyed by a divorce which was encouraged and is supported by such programs is twice as likely to die of heart disease and cancer, three times as likely to die of diabetes or an accident, four times as likely to die of respiratory disease or to commit suicide or to be murdered, and five times as likely to die of cirrhosis, than he was before his children were taken from him in the name of a cause whose terms have yet to be defined.
Continue reading “Violence, Wingnuts and the Multinational Corporation”