Straight Rights Watch: Indiana

This week, on 'Adventures in Sexcrime'...

What are you up to, Indiana?

"The vast majority of both the Senate and House are pro-life legislators, and I think we truly represent Hoosier constituents," said Rep. Eric Turner, R-Marion, who authored House Bill 1210, the bill that would make abortions illegal after 20 weeks. Current state law bans it after the fetus is viable, which a doctor determines, generally around 24 weeks

That... hmm. That certainly doesn't justify an hour of programming on Lifetime. False alarm, thanks for reading, be sure to-

Oh. There's more?

Jeff Fitzgerald: 2 + 2 = 5

Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald today:

We ran on this.  We were going to get the fiscal house in order. This is how we ran in our election. This is how we picked up 14 seats from you guys.  The public spoke (in the elections).  They said, ‘no more, no more. We want you to go to Madison and do what you say you’re going to do.’

Says PolitiFact: 

But Walker, who offered many specific proposals during the campaign, did not go public with even the bare-bones of his multi-faceted plans to sharply curb collective bargaining rights. He could not point to any statements where he did. We could find none either.

"This is a violation of law!"

The Wisconsin State Senate passed a stripped-down version of Governor Scott Walker's "budget-repair bill" earlier tonight. Having had all budget-related elements expunged from the bill in an earlier, makeshift committee with only one Democrat present — Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca — the nineteen Senate Republicans were able to vote on Walker's bill as a non-budgetary action in the Senate does not require a successful quorum — what the Senate Democrats had been blocking with their escape from state troopers to Illinois.

And it wasn't even legal. Wisconsin law requires a twenty-four hour notice before a public body — like the aforementioned makeshift committee — can meet and only two hours were given. This breach of conduct weighed not on the Republican's minds for a second nor did the incredulous protests of Barca. "This is a violation of law! It's not a rule!"

Michigan thinks Walker isn't extreme enough.

Let's see what Michigan is up to.

Legislation that would allow emergency financial managers to throw out union contracts and overrule elected officials in financially distressed municipalities and school districts was approved in the Senate today.

Remember how Obama was being lambasted for using 'czars'? Even though they had no power? And were just glorified advisors that took his positions in meetings and would report back with status updates and their own views? Remember that? And the outrage from Republicans? There's no way any Senate Republicans from Michigan voted for this measure. No way. That would be hypocritical beyond hysterics.

Straight Rights Watch: Texas

This is beginning to get ridiculous.

Women seeking an abortion would have to first get an ultrasound under a measure approved on Thursday by the Texas House of Representatives. 

The proposal, the first significant bill considered by the House this year, was designated by Republican Governor Rick Perry as an emergency priority. A similar measure has already been approved by the state Senate.

An emergency priority, Governor?  Your state has a $30 billion dollar deficit and forcing women seeking an abortion to get an ultrasound is an emergency priority?  Is the next emergency priority new tetherballs for playgrounds or did you already get to that one?

Straight Rights Watch: South Dakota

The Straight Rights Watch is back!  Today, let's look to South Dakota:

South Dakota's governor said Thursday that he'll likely sign off on new abortion guidelines that would be some of the strictest in the country, requiring women to wait 72 hours before they could go through with the procedure and to submit to counseling about why they shouldn't. 

[...] 

But the 72-hour wait would be the longest in the nation, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.

It appears Blackwhite is contagious.

Republicans* said and did some really absurd and scary things yesterday.

Scott Fitzgerald, the Senate Majority Leader:

We simply cannot have democracy be held hostage because the minority wants to prove a point.

That's right, Scott Fitzgerald.  It is holding democracy hostage that the Senate Democrats are doing by staying in Illinois.  Because what your fellow Senate Republicans did—rubber-stamping a bill from the Governor's office with a nary a thought to what was in the bill, refusing to support any Democrat's amendment, refusing to submit any of your own amendments unless the Governor asked and voting to block any amendments from even being offered--is democratic.  Being an extension of the Governor's office as members of a separate branch of the government is democratic and the Senate Democrats leaving the state is not.

On Wisconsin, part two.

Part one can be found here.

1904.  New York City.  A burgeoning metropolis beginning to stand upright and not just walk, but run.  To sprint.  Feeling lactic acid immigrating to its tissues.  On the twenty-second of April, a wealthy textile importer and his painter wife have their first child.  The boy is named Julius.

Julius grows up in circumstances approaching dreams: a house with three original paintings from Van Gogh sprinkled between pieces from Picasso and Vuillard, studying at the Ethical Culture Society School which remains to this day a bastion of progressive thought, a father with a keen interest in schools who serves also as a member of the Society of Ethical Culture, a mother openly encouraging Julius and his younger brother to be eager with their interests and to try new things and to be inquisitive.

On Wisconsin, part one.

This week, Catalan at Heart presents 'On Wisconsin', a multi-part look at the budgetary imbroglio Wisconsin finds itself in.  By tracing the who, the how, the why and everything between, we will offer a seemingly tangential, always empirical and ultimately definitive look on the crisis.  With snark.

As far as Wisconsin political theatre goes, the drama from fourteen Senate Democrats refusing a call to quorum and escaping to Illinois to avoid a sure-to-lose vote on Governor Scott Walker's "budget repair bill" is without precedent.  While the resulting schism is not starved for analogues to earlier affairs -- race relations, the original turmoil over unions, Bush/Kerry, Laverne and Shirley ending -- the connectedness of today's society has artificially amplified the fervor to a new critical mass.

While feasible to have avoided or compartmentalized earlier affairs, one click of the mouse or opening of a vibrating phone or button press of a remote control assaults one with instant news and faster commentary.  With tweets and status alerts and wall postings now the stuff of nightmares, a relentless force hunting and chasing regardless of the speed undertaken to get away or the tactics performed to elude its clutches.

On outright disinformation.

The Godwalker's spokesman, Cullen Werwie, through a statement on that whole switchboard snafu:

Throughout this call the Governor maintained his appreciation for and commitment to civil discourse. The phone call shows that the governor says the same thing in private as he does in public and the lengths that others will go to disrupt the civil debate Wisconsin is having.

Let's go to the transcript:

One man, two chats.

Last night, Governor Walker had what he himself a "fireside chat".  With Checkers on his lap, his wife Martha enkindling the dried wood in the fireplace and polio making sweet love to his central nervous system, The Godwalker honestly addressed Wisconsin citizens with a charisma not seen since Kennedy.  Within two minutes of speaking, virgin women listening across the state found themselves of child, the conception not an immaculate miracle but a run-of-the-mill act by a Republican governor staying the course on a wildly popular, will-of-the-people measure.

His voice smoothed the rough edge of the minority populus with the grace of Nancy Reagan and the passion of one thousand suns.  The fiends, those duplicitous fiends, those evil liberals and public-union supporters, were vanquished like a Tolkein villain.  No elf weaponry needed, no sons of Kings needed to coerce an army of dead, no rotund midgets with thick and foul hair needed to swing an axe.  No, words were the means to the end.

On polls.

No. 1: A We Ask America Poll finding 51.9% of Wisconsin residents oppose The Godwalker's budget-repair bill, with only 43.05% approving.

No. 2: A USA Today/Gallup Poll finding 61% of the national public oppose the drastic measures proposed in The Godwalker's budget-repair bill, with only 33% supporting. 

No. 3: A Rasmussen Reports Poll finding 48% of likely U.S. voters support The Godwalker's budget-repair bill, with only 38% opposing.

Which is not like the other?  A great read from the always excellent Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight:

We’ve noted before that the automated polling firm Rasmussen Reports has had problems with bias in a statistical sense: in the election last fall, its polls overestimated the standing of Republican candidates by roughly 4 percentage points on average.

A somewhat different issue arises today in a poll the firm conducted on the dispute in Wisconsin between Gov. Scott Walker and some of the state’s public-employee unions.

[...]

According to the firm’s statement of question wording, these were the first four questions Rasmussen asked in the poll:

1: How closely have you followed news reports about the Wisconsin governor’s effort to limit collective bargaining rights for most state employees?
2: Does the average public employee in your state earn more than the average private sector worker in your state, less than the average private sector worker in your state, or do they earn about the same amount?
3: Should teachers, firemen and policemen be allowed to go on strike?
4: In the dispute between the governor and the union workers, do you agree more with the governor or the union for teachers and other state employees?

[...]

The issue is clearest with the third question, which asked respondents whether “teachers, firemen and policemen” should be allowed to go on strike. By invoking the prospect of such strikes, which are illegal in many places (especially for the uniformed services) and which many people quite naturally object to, the poll could potentially engender a less sympathetic reaction toward the protesters in Wisconsin. It is widely recognized in the scholarship on the subject, and I have noted before, that earlier questions in a survey can bias the response to later ones by framing an issue in a particular way and by casting one side of the argument in a less favorable light.

The Rasmussen example is more blatant than most.

A polling firm that overestimates nationwide Republicans by four percent cooks a poll to show favour for The Godwalker "staying the course".  Straight to the garbage with you, number three.

On Fox News.

A request, dear reader, to watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAJg8AVRgN8

If you're not one to watch seven minutes of Rachel Maddow tackling Glenn Beck on the strife in Wisconsin, a summary:

-- In 2009, WorldNetDaily publishes a column by Joel Richardson: What Obama and the Antichrist have in common.

-- Richardson is now being booked by Fox News to appear as an expert on the Wisconsin protests... and how there's a menacing, ancient-evil connect with the turmoil in Egypt.

-- "Now, now--especially if you do not watch Fox News, just so you're inoculated as to what you are likely to hear the next time a fervent Fox News viewer tells you what's going on in Wisconsin--now it is important to know what it is that Fox News is telling its viewers about how to understand the protests in Wisconsin.  Because what Fox is telling their viewers involves The Anti-Christ."

-- Beck believes the Wisconsin protests to be the progeny of an Islamic end-of-days cabal. [NOTE: Fox News allows Beck to host a self-titled, hour-long program each weekday at 5pm ET.]

-- Beck having Richardson on his show.

-- Beck saying he "about wet his pants" about doing research on the Anti-Christ.

-- A clip of Richardson claiming to be an end-times prophet.

-- "I say this not just to point and shriek, but because what happens on Fox News and in conservative media really influences how American conservatives think, even when it's so unbelievably out there you can't really believe that anyone would believe it. [...]that when even the craziest reaches of right wing media talk about this stuff, conservatives listen to it."

-- Cut to a New Jersey "conservatives" poll from 2009.  Question: Do you think Barack Obama is the Anti-Christ?  Not sure: 17%.  Yes: 18%.

-- Fox News: effectively "Republican State Television".

-- "I am pointing this out because one of your more gullible conservative friends or relations, sometime soon, is going to come to you and tell you that the Anti-Christ is why Hosni Mubarak was a good guy and the Anti-Christ is why firefighters in your town should not have Blue Cross Blue Shield."

To quote 1984 again:

If human equality is to be forever averted--if the High, as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently--then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.

Next, another request to watch Bill O'Reilly claim The Moon as existence of a supernatural, super-intelligence, super-knowable consciousness: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyHzhtARf8M

For anyone who fancies themselves a sapient-being capable of rational thought and discourse with other like-minded bipedal mammals,  you really must watch this.  But if you haven't that want:

A question from "David, in Beverly Hills, Florida": What do you mean when you refer to the tides when you are asked about the existence of God?  Science explains the tides... the moon's gravity pulls on the oceans.

O'Reilly, in response:

Ok, how did The Moon get there?  How did The Moon get there?  Look, you pinheads who attack me for this, you guys are just desperate.  How did the moon get there?  How did The Sun get there?  How did it get there?  Can you explain that to me?  How come we have that and Mars doesn't have it?  Venus doesn't have it.  How come?  Why not?  How did it get here?  How did that little amoeba get here, crawl out there, how did it do it?  Come on.  You have order in this universe, you have an order in the universe: tide comes in, tide goes out.  Ok, yeah, The Moon does it.  Fine, how did The Moon get there?  Who put it there?  Did it just happen? Okay, if we have existence, if we have life on Earth, how come they don't have it on the other planets?  Were we just lucky?

Well, I sure believe in God now!

...

...

Ahem.

1984, again:

Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. 

Flashback to 19 July of last year.  Andrew Breitbart, a self-described Reagan conservative (founder of breitbart.com, Washington Times commentator, guest commentator across cable news, former Drudge Report editor and Arianna Huffington researcher) smears Shirley Sherrod (timeline) and Fox News spearheads the dissemination and propping up of the story.

I believe a theme is emerging.  Not that Fox News has a conservative slant.  If that's news, waking daylight is news.  No, not that Fox News has a conservative slant, but that Fox News, as Maddow stated, is Republican State Television.

Oh, hello,what's this?

“When I first got there back in the day, and I don’t know how they indoctrinate people now, but back in the day when they were “training” you, as it were, they would say, ‘Here’s how we’re different.’ They’d say if there is an execution of a condemned man at midnight and there are all the live truck outside the prison and all the lives shots.  CNN would go, ‘Yes, tonight John Jackson, 25 of Mississippi, is going to die by lethal injection for the murder of two girls.’ MSNBC would say the same thing.

“We would come out and say, ‘Tonight, John Jackson who kidnapped an innocent two year old, raped her, sawed her head off and threw it in the school yard, is going to get the punishment that a jury of his peers thought he should get.’ And they say that’s the way we do it here. And you’re going , alright, it’s a bit of an extreme example but it’s something to think about. It’s not unreasonable.

"When you first get in they tell you we’re a bit of a counterpart to the screaming left wing lib media. So automatically you have to buy into the idea that the other media is howling left-wing. Don’t even start arguing that or you won’t even last your first day.
“For the first few years it was let’s take the conservative take on things. And then after a few years it evolved into, well it’s not just the conservative take on things, we’re going to take the Republican take on things which is not necessarily in lock step with the conservative point of view.

“And then two, three, five years into that it was, we’re taking the Bush line on things, which was different than the GOP. We were a Stalin-esque mouthpiece.  It was just what Bush says goes on our channel. And by that point it was just totally dangerous.  Hopefully most people understand how dangerous it is for a media outfit to be a straight, unfiltered mouthpiece for an unchecked president.”

It’s worth noting that Fox News employees, either current or former, rarely speak to the press, even anonymously. And it’s even rarer for Fox News sources to bad mouth Murdoch’s channel. That’s partly because of strict non-disclosure agreements that most exiting employees sign and which forbid them from discussing their former employer. But  it also stems from a pervasive us-vs.-them attitude that permeates Fox News. It’s a siege mentality that network boss Roger Ailes encourages, and one that colors the coverage his team produces.

Fox News: artificially adding boos to Ron Paul's announced victory of this year's CPAC straw poll, using footage of a Tea Party rally to drum up attendance figures of a Michele Bachmann anti-health care rally, using 2008 campaign footage in attempt to drum up DO NOT FEED THE TROLL drawing large crowds on a book tour, their Washington manager telling reporters and producers to exclusively call the public option "'government-run health insurance' or, when brevity is a concern, 'government option,' whenever possible", presenting Vice President Biden saying "the fundamentals of the economy are strong" in March of 2009 when said clip actually came from Mr Biden in 2008 at a campaign rally quoting Senator John McCain, calling a fist bump between Barack and Michelle Obama a 'terrorist fist jab', claiming President Obama's budget was four times the size of President George W. Bush's largest, pimping false household costs by five-or-ten-fold for cap-and-trade, claiming an Obama administration 'Czar' withheld information on statutory rape, ignoring a gay-rights rally the size of a Tea Party rally they themselves backed,  hired DO NOT FEED THE TROLL, etc, etc.

You know from where:

This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound tracks, cartoons, photographs--to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance.  Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date.  In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record.  All history was a palimpsest, scrapped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.  In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.

With the ban on corporate political spending lifted, with a cable channel that pushes not a side of an argument but a distorted and twisted fiction, with a cable channel whose owner gave one million dollars to the Republican party because they "had a pro-business agenda", with public union campaign contributions having a 95/5 Democrat/Republican split, does it surprise anyone how vehement the attack is on public unions?  The battle in Wisconsin isn't about balancing budgets but the shredding of a Democratic base.

The battle in Wisconsin is blood in the water for the Republican sharks.

On cannabis.

Mr Walker, on 18 February 2011, from Charlie Sykes' radio program, talking about Wisconsin's "strongest civil protections":

Those fully remain intact. Civil service does not get altered by the modest changes we’re talking about here. Collective bargaining is fully intact. You’ve got merit hiring, you’ve got just cause for termination and for discipline. All those things remain.

I have but one word for that: cannabis.  Because no sober mind would dare stating collective bargaining is fully intact.

That or doublethink.  The choice is yours.

This is some Orwellian bullshit.

From Christopher Hitchens' 'Worse than 1984' (Slate, 2005):

In North Korea, every person is property and is owned by a small and mad family with hereditary power. Every minute of every day, as far as regimentation can assure the fact, is spent in absolute subjection and serfdom. The private life has been entirely abolished. One tries to avoid cliché, and I did my best on a visit to this terrifying country in the year 2000, but George Orwell's 1984 was published at about the time that Kim Il Sung set up his system, and it really is as if he got hold of an early copy of the novel and used it as a blueprint. ("Hmmm … good book. Let's see if we can make it work.")

I've really tried to avoid mentioning 1984.  But when seeds of The Party slap you in the face...
 
From 1984, excerpts from the 'The Book' The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism:

War, it will be seen, not only accomplishes the  necessary destruction, but accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way.  In principle it would be quite simple to waste the surplus labor of the world by building temples and pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even by producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them.  But this would provide only the economic and not the emotional basis for a hierarchical society.  What is concerned here is not the morale of the masses, whose attitude is unimportant so long as they are kept steadily at work, but the morale of the Party itself. 

Mr Walker: "If anything, I think it's made the Republicans in the Assembly and the Senate stronger."

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald: “If anything, what’s going on in this building is galvanizing the caucus.  There’s nobody in this caucus that’s soft."

National GOP chair Reince Priebus: “Our party’s all in. We’re going to be all in."

A 'We Ask Ameica' poll "asked respondents if they approve or disapprove of Walker’s plans. According to the poll, 43.05% approved and 51.9% disapproved. 5.05% were uncertain."  Margin of error: ±2%

Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph.

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio): "Republicans in Congress — and reform-minded GOP governors like Scott Walker, John Kasich and Chris Christie — are daring to speak the truth about the dire fiscal challenges Americans face at all levels of government, and daring to commit themselves to solutions that will liberate our economy and help put our citizens on a path to prosperity.  I’m disappointed that instead of providing similar leadership from the White House, the president has chosen to attack leaders such as Gov. Walker, who are listening to the people and confronting problems that have been neglected for years at the expense of jobs and economic growth."

AP: Walker insisted he was not targeting public employees and that his primary concern was balancing the budget.

jsonline: Walker has said his proposed cuts to employee benefits would save the state nearly $330 million [NOTE: $30 million this fiscal year, $300 million the next two] through mid-2013

Math: $3.6 billion - $300 million = $3.3 billion

Adventures in doublethink: jsonline: But Walker defended his plan, saying the public employee union has “a stranglehold” on the state through tough negotiating that is “like a virus, eating up our budget.”

If human equality is to be forever averted--if the High, as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently--then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.

From the comments:

Man on GrassyKnoll: Go Governor Walker. The sound you hear outside your window are the howls of spoiled children that have been told NO by there parents for the first time ever. "Honey, our credit cards are maxed out. I can't buy you the $200 jeans. You'll have to buy the ones at the Gap."

Yabecoo: Senators,
Get back to work you gutless wonders! You took an oath to represent all of your constituency not just the ones you agree with! Stop underminding the democratic process and do the job you are payed to do!

WisconsinInNC: What a bunch of COWARDS! Get back and DO YOUR JOB! 

OurVoiceShouldMatter: Stand strong Gov. Walker. More are supporting you than are against you.  The 14 Dems are a disgrace to the state Government.  Liberal cowards!

Yanni: glow1615...where have you been? Didn't you hear, Jesse Jackson and Eugene Kane were protesting a local Dairy Queen for selling more vanilla than chocolate in Madison!

jimslip: To answer the question about whether a union cop would retrieve these awol bureaucrats, the answer is yes. A cop knows that his job is important. Apparently teachers didn't get that memo. No wonder America's education system is failing. Look who is filling these position. Very selfish people.

LibertyFirst1776: Liberals can never win an argument on the facts. They must resort to initimidation, name-calling, and violence. This is a perfect example.

 As told to Winston:

Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.  Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating?  It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined.  A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself.  Progress in our world will be progress toward more pain.  The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love and justice.  Ours is founded upon hatred.  In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph and self-abasement.  Everything else we shall destroy--everything.