Friday, March 30

Ep 121 The Professional Left Podcast

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Links:

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Thanks again Marlene at ZMac Consulting and  Heather at Crooks and Liars Video Cafe for their help. And don't forget you can listen to our archives for free with no downloads or registration at Professional Left.

Friday, March 23

Ep 120 The Professional Left Podcast

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Links for this Episode:


Wonkette:  Shocker!  Rick Santorum Endorses Barack Obama


Send your congressman a handknit uterus


Nasdaq.com reviews the "bipartisan" JOBS Bill


Sara Robinson on the 40 hour work week


The most nepotistic member of Congress.


The button below allows listeners to throw a contribution specifically towards the podcast.  Thanks for your listenership and support!  We really appreciate it:





Thanks again Marlene at ZMac Consulting and  Heather at Crooks and Liars Video Cafe for their help. And don't forget you can listen to our archives for free with no downloads or registration at Professional Left.

Wednesday, March 21

The Photoshop Everyone Will Be Doing Today - Mitt as Etch a Sketch


h/t Jeanne, Here's an actual Mitt Romney Spokesmodel who does not seem to be aware of these things they call the YouTube or the television camera and how they work.


The Think Progress piece accompanying their video is here.

Tuesday, March 20

National Review Online's BlogMother just keeps giving and giving.

I want to state for the record that I just love Katherine Jean Lopez, and not just with the "for the grace of God there go I" prayer I say every single time I hear about her. h/t WhiskeyFire, here she is defending Darryl Issa's panel.  PS. Honestly, Katie, Darryl Issa is not defending Darryl Issa's panel. You can give up now. But no:

Liberal Democratic women ask, “Where are the women?” — ignoring women who have publicly opposed the coercive mandate in hearings and letters and protests of various sorts. And, just for the record, there is yet another answer to their question: Women are in the pope’s prayers.


Yeah, I know exactly how the Pope's prayers for women are going, too.  Emphasis mine, from the best article on the Catholic abuse scandal ever written:

The idea that the Church authorities simply don’t understand what is going on was further emphasized when the Vatican last month [July 2010] outlined its opposition to the sexual abuse of minors by members of the clergy and to the ordination of women in the same document, and threatened greater punishment for those who got involved in the latter than in the former.

Too bad the Pope's*** prayers aren't doing much for National Review Online, who obviously would do well to repeat their threat of last spring:


***most of the commenters at Catholic.com say if you're talking about the specific fabulously shoe-d pontiff currently residing in Vatican City, it should be capitalized.  K-Lo,  I hope the POPE, CAPITAL P-O-P-E, is praying for you to get a new copy editor.

Saturday, March 17

Meghan McCain in Playboy and Why It Matters





Meghan McCain is in Playboy (google it yourself) quoted as saying "I like sex and I like men." Which leads me to re-run this post I wrote in 2009. You might also be interested in using the search box above to search my blog for "abortion." Lots of writing there. -- BG





I attended a Community Organizing type meeting sponsored by the school district where as of next year, all three of my children will attend. The meeting was run by the President of the School Board, a man who clearly came from a long line of AME preachers, because "parental involvement in education" was not just the theme of the meeting, it was the God bless-ed gospel, and don't you forget it.

We parents who attended a 90 minute mid-day meeting to discuss parental involvement over cold Subway platters? Yeah. He was preaching to the converted.

The purpose of the meeting was to gather feedback and help to form a plan of action to help more parents in our community involve themselves in their children's education. We brainstormed on reasons why parents in my community might not become involved. Some of the reasons, and I am not making these up, on the paper flipchart (thank you Jesus there was no Powerpoint presentation):

Lack of transportation
Holding down multiple jobs
Substance abuse
Power is turned off at home
One or both parents are incarcerated

I mean, we got to "incarceration" within four minutes.

I live in a poor city. Every elementary school in the district is designated Title I, which means extra Federal funds because, duh, the majority of parents in the district are low income. It's called "Improving The Academic Achievement Of The Disadvantaged" but in the world of No Child Left Behind the focus is, of course, far more about standardized test scores than about making sure the child's home has a paid electric bill and at least one parent not in jail.




image from drunkstepmother's collection. Irony is dead.


A few days after this meeting, I met, literally on the schoolyard, an acquaintance, the mother of one of my 6yo's friends. She's under 30, dayglo red hair, tattoos, and a hand-cut cleavage wild child t-shirt.

She's pregnant. Again.

"We found out late. I'm due August 4. I just found out this week."

Dear readers: I do not do math in my head very quickly, but I knew right away for a fact that this woman had gone four cycles pregnant and had just "found out." Granted, as someone who has gone through infertility treatment, I STILL know two years after my tubes were done my exact day of would-be ovulation every single month.

But look, it's one thing to not know anything about what is going on in the world or even your kid's school and not give a shit. It's another to not know what the hell is going on in your own body.

Mr. Gingrich, while I have you on the phone, allow me to say that I am far more worried about the threat to this nation of ignorant parents and their neglected children, as well as a government policy that thinks they can fix these problems with standardized testing, than I am about some invented terrorist boogie man you want to prop up on the Sunday shows. And don't you EVER mention family values while I'm within castrating distance of you.

________________

Unlike this whole torture-the-terrorists BS brought on by Cheney and Gingrich, there is an actual debate going on in the Republican party over sex: exemplified by Bristol Palin on the 'anti-sex' side and Meghan McCain on the 'pro-sex' side. It recalls a New Yorker article I've linked many times before and will again, Red Sex, Blue Sex:

Social liberals in the country’s “blue states” tend to support sex education and are not particularly troubled by the idea that many teen-agers have sex before marriage, but would regard a teen-age daughter’s pregnancy as devastating news. And the social conservatives in “red states” generally advocate abstinence-only education and denounce sex before marriage, but are relatively unruffled if a teen-ager becomes pregnant, as long as she doesn’t choose to have an abortion.
So Bristol Palin gets pregnant and doesn't get an abortion, and her choices are understood and even accepted in Red State world. And Meghan McCain is clearly sexually active but doesn't get pregnant, and describes herself as a "progressive Republican."

It's become very clear to me this week after offering, sincerely, to help the "just found out" mom find some hand-me-down baby clothes, that the debate between Bristol and Meghan is not about political party or feminism or even sex itself. It is about economic class. (Yes, my preschooler can tell you that Mommy is a Marxist in the intellectual sense.)

Remember the wonderful old movie Pygmalion, from the Shaw play, with Wendy Hiller and Leslie Howard? Done far better than the My Fair Lady version, mind you. Professor Higgins announces that he will make Eliza Doolittle into a fine lady by teaching her to speak properly:




HIGGINS [carried away] Yes: in six months -- in three if she has a good ear and a quick tongue -- I'll take her anywhere and pass her off as anything. We'll start today: now! this moment! Take her away and clean her, Mrs. Pearce. Is there a good fire in the kitchen?

MRS. PEARCE [protesting]. Yes; but—

HIGGINS [storming on] Take all her clothes off and burn them. Ring up Whitely or somebody for new ones. Wrap her up in brown paper til they come.

LIZA. You're no gentleman, you're not, to talk of such things. I'm a good girl, I am; and I know what the like of you are, I do.

HIGGINS. We want none of your slum prudery here, young woman. You've got to learn to behave like a duchess.
Behaving like a duchess means having no concern over whether society thinks you are a 'good girl' sexually. George Bernard Shaw understood that the cultural battle over sexual morals is not about sex. It's about whether you need to position yourself as morally superior about sex, because that is your economic class's only claim to gentility. (Notice Eliza's slum prudery extends so far as to getting naked for a bath.)

Oh. Did somebody say duchess?



There she is, the daughter of military royalty and brewmaster aristocracy. The word "privileged" comes to mind.

Something Bristol Palin is not.

Bristol Palin recently said "If girls realized the consequences of sex, nobody would be having sex. Trust me. Nobody." Clearly, 'nobody' does not include Meghan McCain, because Meghan has the financial, emotional, and educational resources to protect herself from the unwanted consequences of sexual activity. In a word, she can afford to be pro-sex. Hell, if she gets pregnant, she can afford a crib that costs as much as educating three kids in Catholic school for a year.



Or have Cindy's people call for shipping. The wealthy can afford the crib and the sex and the babies and even the abortions, even if the poor in the red states were to succeed in making that illegal. There's always a trip to Canada, Norway, or a high-priced physician willing to perform an undocumented "procedure." Most importantly, unlike the vast unwashed of Red State Evangelicalism, the rich do not need a pro-life anti-sex political position to be Better Than You.

The rich can also afford to opt out of Title I public education. In doing so, they leave their debt to society completely and utterly unpaid. Not ironically, education leads to a higher 'class' of people, people who don't need slum morals and sexual hypocrisy to prove superior societal status. If we want less influence for the religious right and the Republican Party that takes advantage of their ignorance, we have to start going to public school board meetings and find baby clothes and maybe a clue for the unrefined mother down the street. Paying my debt to society includes her baby, too.

cross-posted at SexGenderBody

Friday, March 16

The Professional Left Podcast Ep 119

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Links for this Episode:


Wonkette:  Study: Liberals All So Intolerant, Want Everyone to Die, on Facebook


Driftglass on the Illinois GOP Primary


The button below allows listeners to throw a contribution specifically towards the podcast.  Thanks for your listenership and support!  We really appreciate it:





Thanks again Marlene at ZMac Consulting and  Heather at Crooks and Liars Video Cafe for their help. And don't forget you can listen to our archives for free with no downloads or registration at Professional Left.

My Facebook letter to Sam Brownback.

In case you haven't heard, the Kansas legislature is considering allowing doctors to LIE TO THEIR PATIENTS about the results of an amniocentesis so that the family will not abort a baby with a genetic abnormality. Governor Sam Brownback has said that women "should go work somewhere else" if they don't like their employer's birth control policy. (I can't believe I just typed 'employer's birth control policy' as if that should have any power whatsoever.)

Anyway, many women are having fun at Brownback's Facebook page, informing him of the progress of their menstrual cycles and seeking lady part advice from him.

Here's my letter. Warning, this letter is actually much more sacriligious than I am in real life, but my guardian angel, who looks just like a healthy Amy Winehouse, told me that was okay given the circumstances.
Dear Governor Brownback, Several years ago I had to have surgery on my uterus to remove fibroid tumors that were preventing me from holding on to any pregnancy. The doctor (who could have been lying with impunity, who knows?) said the fibroid tumors were acting as an IUD and actually rejecting any fertilized egg in my womb.
Did GOD put an IUD in my uterus?
Was God giving me multiple abortions while I was desperately trying to get pregnant?
Maybe all my fertilized eggs pre-surgery had Down's syndrome, and God aborted them because of that?
After the operation, I gave birth to three white, legitimate children who go to Christian Sunday School. Should I tell them to wear little gold plated transvaginal ultrasound wands around their necks, to celebrate all the abortions God gave me before they were born?
 The surgery was paid for by Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Alabama. So was the birth control my husband and I used to determine the timing of bearing my three white, legitimate, Christian Sunday School-going children.
Important question: Can the taxpayers get a refund for all that birth control that they never paid for? Because, you know, that could solve yer state budget crisis right there.
Seriously, Governor Brownback, and I mean this 100% sincerely, may God have mercy on your soul. 
Frances Langum, Springfield Illinois

Wednesday, March 14

Explain to THIS lady why you want to repeal ObamaCare, Michele Bachmann.

And yeah she doubted and voted "independent" etc. but when it comes down to the "rights" of for-profit insurance companies (who did not want to insure this lady anyway!) versus saving her life, the Republican Party does not have an argument. Not one. Anyone who thinks ObamaCare makes the government too big might have an argument, but then they must tell us how they will fix health insurance so that women like the one in this video can afford coverage. And they must tell you how they are going to cover the two million plus people ages 18-26 who now have health insurance on their parent's plans -- NOT due to government spending, but through a modest reform in health insurance regulations that the insurance industry did not fight, because covering young people is a pretty good bet financially. As more white independent home-owning small business owners come to see Obamacare as working for THEM, the Republican Party will rue the day they called Health Insurance Reform by that name. The people who can say "ObamaCare saved my life" and their families will never vote Republican as long as they live.

Saturday, March 10

Shorter "Game Change"



"Game Change" is a get out of guilt card for the inside-the-beltway B-Ark douchebags yes I especially mean you Mark Halperin for foisting that person onto our national stage and consciousness you continued to yank your pee-nees over a possible candidacy until August 15 just last year when Rick Perry put his boot on a hay bale and a corndog in his pie hole at the Iowa State Fair and then you had a new ratings whore but you sleep at night now with "gee, Palin's main consultant couldn't bring herself to vote for her and stayed home from the polls so that proves we're all off the hook" but you all cashed the paychecks didn't you you fucking barnacles? the end.

Friday, March 9

Professional Left Podcast - Ep 118

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The button below allows listeners to throw a contribution specifically towards the podcast.  Thanks for your listenership and support!  We really appreciate it:





Thanks again Marlene at ZMac Consulting and  Heather at Crooks and Liars Video Cafe for their help. And don't forget you can listen to our archives for free with no downloads or registration at Professional Left.

Wednesday, March 7

Birth control is a profit center and possibly a Republican idea.


I received an email this morning from a podcast listener who is engaged in a birth control debate with some Hot Air / Big Government readers.  He sent me transcripts of email exchanges with these "libertarian" friends who also recommend reading Big Government and Hot Air every day to stay on top of things.   But the gist of the argument was about contraception.  So I wrote back.  But I didn't send them the LOL I made:



Thanks for writing.  But the debate on this is OVER.  Obama CAVED to the Catholic Church on this.  They do not have to pay for insurance coverage for contraception, period!  The insurance companies will have to pay for this coverage.  

And let's be clear.  This is about insurance policies that the students pay for.  Georgetown undergraduates PAY over $1800 a year for health insurance.

You will never read that at Hot Effing Air, but you will at websites that are covering the facts of the case instead of just resisting Obama no matter what. 

The thing that gets me is Obama is adopting Republican policies (health care mandate - REPUBLICAN idea that even Gingrich was for six years ago -- Cap and Trade - John McCain's idea) and the tea party that hates him therefore goes batsh*t because they can't be for anything Obama supports, even if Obama says "maybe a Republican has a good idea let's look at it" as he has done DOZENS of times.  Some liberals hate Obama for that, btw.  (Bet your friends have never read FireDogLake - EEK!)  Eventually Obama is going to say "kittens" and the Tea Party is going to be anti-kitten.  

I love that this argument comes from people without ovaries, but whatever.  As a mother of three very wanted children, I can tell you, that I spaced them out because it's healthier for me that way.  Having one baby right after another (which I actually did with 2 and 3) killed my back and caused other health problems.   Mothers use birth control so they can breastfeed and care for their older baby, maybe get him/her out of diapers, before they have baby number 2.  Nothing immoral about that, people. 

So couples of family-bearing age and yes, young women who are FERTILE use birth control for family planning.  Husbands and wives are not going to buy an insurance policy that does not cover that medicine.   And now the laws regulating health insurance say that that medicine has to be covered, because NOT covering it is discriminating against women because DUH, they have reproductive organs that get them pregnant.   

If I buy a car and insurance for it, I'm going to buy collision insurance.  I'm not going to buy a policy that doesn't have collision insurance attached to it, and by the way STATE LAW says I can't anyway.  I have to have that coverage.   Now, because I have a womb and ovaries, law says I have to have health coverage for those organs, and that insurance companies and employers can't separate them out from the total person, sorry boys.  

Finally, this is a non-issue.  Blue Cross covers birth control pills, diaphragms, hormone implants, the whole shebang because it's good business.  

Congratulations, libertarians!!!  Capitalism wins every time.   

Birth control coverage is WAY cheaper than paying for baby deliveries and it's more profitable to offer policies that cover this.  That's only going to be more pervasive when everyone has to buy coverage and these exchanges allow insurance companies to compete on the open market (REPUBLICAN IDEA).   Insurance companies will be tripping over their own reproductive organs to tell women that they cover not only birth control, but private birthing facilities, annual Ob/GYN and mammogram visits, etc. etc. etc. because that means more money for them.  

I absolutely refuse to get involved in an email debate.  But if you want to forward this on, without my email address, because again, I refuse to get involved in an email debate, (did I say I refuse to get involved in an email debate?)   go ahead.  

Sunday, March 4

A serious message for Rush Limbaugh


So Pro-Flowers kinda sorta relents, and "suspends" advertising on your show.  And it's been just one abandonment after another from advertisers who were only too happy to take your listeners' business for years until YOU made that bad for business.

Your next victim should be Congressman Darryl Issa.  If it weren't for his politically motivated disgrace of an "oversight" committee and his ham-handed "boys only, and choir boys only at that" hearing on contraception, Sandra Fluke could have been just one "side" in the media's constant pursuit of "balance."  Instead your treatment of her became the story, and you had no idea what Twitter could do.  We've had practice with Komen and Virginia transvaginal ultrasounds etc. etc. etc.   And your so-called apology does not mean we win.  It means we've just begun, and it is so not over with you and your brand of conmmentary.

But here is a serious message for you, the Breitbarting heirs of Andrew's Empire, and any other flying monkeys trolling and bullying the internet for the thrill of making a liberal mad.  We don't care.  This is not about beating you.   This is about building a community and a society where YOUR behavior is not morally acceptable.

It is not acceptable to bully a witness to a congressional hearing or caucus.  Really, what is the penalty for that in Federal Law?

It is not acceptable to get intoxicated in public and yell, to everyone's incomprehension, "stop raping people" at young women Occupy protesters in a public plaza.  You're dead now, Andrew, but you shamed your children then and that was less than a month ago.

And it is not acceptable to edit film and facts to fit your political agenda.  It is not acceptable to use lies and bullying to destroy the reputations and careers of those who are empowering those less powerful than you.  And if that is your legacy, you are to be pitied and then forgotten.

We don't care about beating you in the grand scheme of things, because you, Rush Limbaugh, (and the late Breitbarter, rest in peace and insignificance) are not in the grand scheme of things.  You are small.  The future is big.

And the label on this post?  Whattsa matter, I was ONLY KIDDING!  It's a joke!  Honestly, liberals have NO sense of humor.

Friday, March 2

I sure hope @ProFlowers decides to pull their ads from Rush Limbaugh soon.

Because this photoshop took me four whole minutes to pull together and I'm just mad enough to photoshop fake ProFlowers ads several times a day and if they try to claim defamation I'll just play their ad next to Rush Limbaugh's slut comments and ask them who exactly is defaming their product anyhoo and by the way do you have any idea how many images pop up when you type "flowers" in Google Image Search and exactly how much I know about fair use doctrine as pertains to both "satire of a public figure or entity" and "nonprofit educational purposes"? I thought you did.

Professional Left Podcast Ep 117

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Link for this episode:  


Politicalprof:  On Legacies


The button below allows listeners to throw a contribution specifically towards the podcast.  Thanks for your listenership and support!  We really appreciate it:





Thanks again Marlene at ZMac Consulting and  Heather at Crooks and Liars Video Cafe for their help. And don't forget you can listen to our archives for free with no downloads or registration at Professional Left.