COVID-19 & Healthcare

GOP might get to continue to wage war on women by lying that they are doing that

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough offers this insight on the 2014 midterm election:

scarborough tweet

What an asshole. This is a guy who rose to prominence vigorously defending the murderer of an abortion doctor and subsequently voted for harsh anti-choice legislation when he got elected to Congress. Here’s what Scarborough had to say about that, on Morning Joe, after Dr. George Tiller was murdered in 2009:

“We’ve got to learn to sit down and talk,” said Scarborough at the climax of this morning’s several minute segment including co-host Mika Brzezinski and Pat Buchanan…
“People who are pro-life like myself can’t call people who are pro-choice murderers, and people who are pro-choice can’t call people who are pro-life — can’t claim they don’t give a damn about women and want women to die in back alley abortions. That is the sort of angry, heated rhetoric over the past quarter century that’s gotten us to where we are today.”

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Republicans Have a Problem with Women (video)

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The Republican Party doesn’t realize what all husbands know: Women have legendary memories. We know where your socks are, and we know who our friends are.

The Party of NO— no leaders, no ideas, no morals, and no action– is not a friend of women. Since the Tea Party astroturf revolution of 2010:

  • Hundreds of bills restricting the rights of women and forcing women to have unnecessary, invasive medical procedures have been passed by red state legislatures, including Arizona’s;
  • 100% of the Republicans in the US Senate have voted against paycheck fairness for women;
  • 100% of the Arizona Republican legislators and statewide leaders– including their candidate for governor, Doug Ducey– signed a fetal personhood pledge to fight for the rights of fetuses over the rights of women;
  • 100% of Republicans in Congress and the Arizona Legislature would deny women equal rights under the US Constitution by continuing to block passage of the Equal Rights Amendment;
  • 0% of Republican candidates have announced their support for raising the minimum wage and wage discrimination against women;
  • Women and children are murdered everyday because Republicans in the US Senate– including Arizona Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake– blocked common sense gun laws proposed after the Sandy Hook Massacre;

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A new American hero: Kaci Hickox, a triumph of science over ignorance, hysteria and fear

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HichoxI was watching the evening news last night, and I was treated to this spectacle of media villagers chasing after nurse Kaci Hickox and her husband while out for a bicycle ride in their hometown in Maine. A full-blown media clusterfuck!

Ms. Hickox, who volunteered her time and professional skills to go to Africa to treat Ebola patients — something few Americans would ever do — and all the other medical professionals who put their calling in life to treat the sick ahead of their own self-interest, ought to be considered exemplary Americans and treated as heroes.

Instead, Ms. Hickox has been demonized. There was one reporter (not pictured) who actually had the nerve to assert to Ms. Hickox that her violating her state-imposed quarantine caused reporters to have to cover her, instead of covering Ebola in Africa. WTF?! I guarantee you that this reporter has no intention of ever setting foot inside Africa to cover Ebola patients. I wanted to beat the snot out of this reporter.

What the corporate media has done over the past month is the most disgraceful example of ignorant fear mongering to create unnecessary panic and hysteria for TV ratings that I can recall in my lifetime. Do you know who needs to be in quarantine? Every goddamn media villager who is spreading the hysteria of “Fearbola”!

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The GOP Wrecking Crew: ‘ It’s hard to imagine a Congress less productive than this one, but obstructionism could actually get worse ‘

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For those of you who have not read Thomas Franks’ 2009 tome, The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Ruined Government, Enriched Themselves, and Beggared the Nation in awhile, it may be time to take it off the bookshelf for another read.

The New York Tines editorializes today, The Prospect of a Republican Senate:

WreckingCrewIn a rare fit of realism on Tuesday, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, admitted he would be unable to repeal the Affordable Care Act if Republicans win the Senate next week and he becomes majority leader. That would take 60 votes, he said, and no one thinks Republicans will get that many.

But conservatives reacted with anger to what they considered a demonstration of weakness, and on Thursday Mr. McConnell was forced to backtrack. Yes, his spokesman told The Washington Examiner, Mr. McConnell remains “committed to the full repeal of Obamacare” with only a simple majority, through a parliamentary procedure known as reconciliation.

Those two comments are a pretty good indication of what life will be like in Congress if Republicans gain control of the Senate in Tuesday’s election, and if Mr. McConnell wins his race in Kentucky. It’s not just that they are committed to time-wasting, obstructionist promises like repeal of health care reform, which everyone knows President Obama would veto. The bigger problem is that the party’s leaders have continually proved unable to resist pressure from the radical right, which may very well grow in the next session of Congress.

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