COVID-19 & Healthcare

They’re shocked! Shocked, I tell you!

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Crossposted at DemocraticDiva.com

claude rains

Let’s say you are Sean Noble, a Koch-ed up dark money operative who has been the focus of some negative attention for your activities. You’d probably prefer to be known for something else in the midst of a heated general election cycle in Arizona, where you are the manager of the GOP candidate for Attorney General. Then it comes to your attention that former AZ Senate President Russell Pearce has said some vile things in public, as he is wont to do. And as right wingers are wont to do so often, Pearce focused his wrath on poor women. In this case Pearce says that poor women on public assistance should be forcibly sterilized.

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Oh look, another nonexistent attack on reproductive rights by a Republican!

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

pearce

I crosspost what I post at Democratic Diva over at Blog for Arizona, and a lot (not all by any means but a lot) of what I blog about is reproductive rights. I do so because I pay close attention to the issue as it’s something I care deeply about and consider hugely important but also because I assume that anyone who pays only a modicum of attention to US and Arizona politics has noticed how intent anti-choice activists and their allies in the Republican party have been on ruthlessly attacking women’s reproductive rights. These attacks take a variety of legal forms – arbitrary late term bans, waiting periods, TRAP laws, attempts to defund Planned Parenthood, so-called “conscience clauses”, the Hobby Lobby SCOTUS decision, women actually being prosecuted for stillbirth and miscarriages, etc. – and I don’t expect the average person to be up on all of them. I would expect, however, expect the average person who is motivated to comment on a liberal political blog to be aware of at least some of them. But apparently this is too much to expect, as I have Blog for AZ commenters informing me that Roe v Wade settled everything in perpetuity and that abortion and contraception will always be available. Okay.

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Of course they ignored repro rights at the Channel 12 debate.

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Crossposted at DemocraticDiva.com

ducey duval

In Wednesday night’s gubernatorial debate hosted by KPNX Channel 12 candidates Fred DuVal (D) and Doug Ducey (R) were asked about topics ranging from the economy to taxation to Common Core school standards to the border and immigration policy. My assessment of it was that Ducey would have gotten away with his recitation of talking points with no specifics to every question were it not for moderator Brahm Resnik, who does not care for that and pressed him for details, causing Ducey to flail. DuVal was definitely better prepared to answer the actual questions.

Noticeably absent, to me and other reproductive rights advocates, were any questions about women’s health and family planning. This deliberate elision is far too common here and not something seen in other red states North Carolina and Texas, where candidates are debating things like abortion and contraception vigorously, as they should since anti-choice laws are being passed like crazy in them. But, for some reason, the mainstream news people in Arizona tend to be squeamish about the topic. You may see the question come up, briefly, in one or two major debates but not in most of them. On the rare occasion moderators do ask it’s typically to allow the GOP candidate to express his support for “exceptions for rape and incest” with no follow-up questions.

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The Sinema vet ad is wonderful so step off, haters

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It’s well known that prominent politicians, due to having to raise funds constantly (which means having to avoid pissing off donors) and being under a 24/7 microscope, aren’t able to be open and candid much of the time. On the other hand, politicians are far from the only people whose jobs and social lives require … Read more

The Trouble with E.Orr: Taking credit where it is not due

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EyeoreThe Citizens Clean Elections Debate for the LD 9 House between incumbent Rep. Ethan Orr (R-Tucson) aka “E.Orr,” and Dr. Randall Friese (D-Tucson) was actually quite interesting. LD9 General Election Debate Video Replay. E.Orr’s seat mate Rep. Victoria Steele (D-Tucson) was unable to attend.

It seems that E.Orr thinks quite highly of himself as the lone Republican in the Arizona legislature from  Baja Arizona not from Cochise County. He continuously implied and suggested that without him, the blue island of Tucson and Pima County would get nothing from our Tea-Publican colonial overlords in the state of Maricopa. We have heard this line from Tea-Publicans before. The last set of Tea-Publican legislators from Pima County routinely sought to punish the blue island of  Tucson and Pima County out of partisan ill will as you will recall.

It’s too bad that Victoria Steele was not able to attend because I would love to have seen her reaction to E.Orr taking sole credit for the Mental Health First Aid bill, HB 2570 (2013) which was co-sponsored by Reps. Steele and Orr. That bill failed (it was held in the Senate). Rep. Steele sponsored the bill again in 2014, HB 2490 (Orr was not a sponsor to this bill). Steele introduces Youth Mental Health First Aid Bill. This bill also failed (held in the Senate). The $250,000 was eventually appropriated in the budget.

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