[Washington, DC, February 15, 2013] Pundits were astonished today when members of the GOP-led House Committee on Science, Space and Technology announced plans to hold hearings on science and the lack of federal research into the causes of natural catastrophes.
One witness agreed to appear:
* * *
Seriously, yesterday, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) announced that he was shocked, shocked that the United States Guv’ment had not been investing enough money into scientific reasons why that meteor that exploded in the skies over Siberia, injuring over 1,000 people.
Yup, they are finally going to look at science because the sky is falling. And they’re afraid it will land on them.
In the spring and summer of 1986 random parts of my face started growing for no apparent reason. I would be at home, on the subway, or off working somewhere around DC.
First it was a swollen eyebrow. Then that would go away and a day or two later, my cheek would grow so that I couldn’t see well out of one eye.
Mostly it was my lips, though. They would grow, sometimes individually, sometimes together. I looked like a duck.
Did I mention I was also getting married in September? That September? And while John and I had a fairly small and simple wedding, I was unenthusiastic about going to the altar looking like a daisy. Especially this one.
Of course, John’s lips would have been normal. Mine? Not so much.
But work was so completely crazy that I ignored it. I was a lobbyist/flunky at the time, and was spending long days up on Capitol Hill working on the Tax Reform Act of 1986. (And it was the perfect assignment for me; I did my own taxes – on the U.S. Government 1040-EZ form. Tax Returns for Poor Dummies.) I was in over my head, didn’t have a clue what was going on, what was important, or which way was up. I was a wee bit stressed.
Plus that summer we decided to buy our first house just so we could send my stress level through the roof of my brand new adorable little house.
But back to my problem. My ever changing facial features.
People were looking at me strangely which I understood – I often and suddenly looked really odd. But even stranger, they stopped talking whenever I would approach. These were people I’d worked with for more than six years. Something weird was going on.
And I found out what that was early one morning as I stood talking in the front lobby to my boss, also (irritatingly) named John. He was giving me instructions on that day’s most important issues, when to pay especially close attention, when to call him immediately with an update.
At the beginning of the chat, my face was normal. But as we talked, my lips spontaneously grew larger and larger. More duck-like.
“Elyse,” my boss said, “what’s happening to your lips?”
“They’re growing. Spontaneously. I don’t know why. But you’ve seen me with a swollen face off and on for the last couple of months. Haven’t you noticed? And it keep on happening. Luckily, John has promised to marry me even if I look like Daisy Duck when I arrive at the church.”
The look of relief on his face was instantaneous – he joked with me about the fat lips, about stress, about what I might be allergic to. He’s a really nice guy, and he cared about me. But it wasn’t until much later when I realized just why he had looked so relieved.
He thought I was being abused by my husband-to-be. And he, a very powerful Washington DC lawyer, who knew/knows everybody in town, had no idea what to do. He didn’t ask me if anybody was hurting me. He didn’t threaten to report John, or try to find out discretely whether folks in John’s office thought John might be abusive. No, my boss talked to other folks who also cared about me and who also didn’t know what to do to save me from what, had it been true, would have been a huge mistake.
(In fairness, they didn’t know my John at all – it wasn’t a very social office.)
And once I made the connection, I remembered feeling similarly helpless once. I thought about a secretary named Kelly who had worked with us briefly a few years earlier. She and I had become a bit friendly, even though we worked on different floors and in totally different departments. We both loved to play softball. One day I saw Kelly with an enormous black eye.
“I was playing softball with my husband’s team,” she said, shaking her head. “I should have caught the damn ball.”
“I once caught one with my left thigh,” I responded to her, truthfully, but naively. “You could see the stitch marks on the bruise.”
The next day she was gone. Obviously to everyone else her husband had been beating her, and she got help and got away.
The image of her face has haunted me. What would I have done – would I have been able/willing to help her? Would I have ever figured out what was happening to her?
My story ended well. I hadn’t had time to eat properly and subsisted pretty much on a diet of Milky Ways for two months. Woman cannot live on Milky Ways alone. Maybe ducks can. I stopped eating chocolate and looked OK at my wedding. Or at least, I didn’t look like a duck.
I don’t know how Kelly’s story ended. I never will.
* * *
Yesterday, the GOP in the U.S. House of Representatives allowed the Violence Against Women Act, which had been law since 1994, to expire. And they let it happen because it would have expanded coverage of the law to more women including immigrants and Native Americans.
Perhaps you don’t know what the Violence Against Women law does.
My bible, Wikipedia, says that it provide programs and services, including:
Community violence prevention programs
Protections for female victims who are evicted from their homes because of events related to domestic violence or stalking
Funding for female victim assistance services, like rape crisis centers and hotlines
Programs to meet the needs of immigrant women and women of different races or ethnicities
Programs and services for female victims with disabilities
Legal aid for female survivors of violence
But what it really does is help abused women. To let them know that they can get help. That they are not alone. And it can also give their families, friends and co-workers vital, life saving information about how to help. How to act. What to do besides wonder amongst everyone else but the person most impacted. Literally.
Now tell me, what’s not to like about this law? It gives vital assistance to vulnerable women – those who most need it. A place to go where they can take their kids, get help.
It gives folks who don’t know what to do or what to say a clue as to how to help women in need.
Where they don’t have to give up that last little bit of their heart.
I have stated this more often than I can stand, but the men in the GOP are not on the side of women, or on the side of men who respect women.
GET THEM OUT OF OUR LIVES
Then, Damn them to Hell where they belong
***
What you and I can do:
Contact your representatives in Congress and demand they pass the Violence Against Women Act as it stands today with expanded services: http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/
If it is God’s will that a woman gets pregnant when she’s raped, how do these lady parts that shut down and prevent pregnancy fit in?
You see why I’m confused now, don’t you?
But naturally, Bloggers have saved the day.
Yup, they answered my question. Illustrated the situation. And now you too will understand it all. You’re welcome.
Here is a guide posted on one of my favorite blogs, DailyKos.com (that’s where I learn all kinds of fascinating things). I just had to share this illustration so you won’t be confused either. It was originally posted there by Connecticutie but updated by brainwrap today in light of Richard Mourdock’s comment at last night’s debate.
Understand it now? Good. I knew you would.
* * *
Full disclosure here.
I am not pro-abortion. I have never had an abortion, and I recall how when I was young and single that I grappled with the question: “If I get pregnant, what will I do?” It was never a question that needed an actionable answer. I was lucky. Many others weren’t.
You know, I don’t know or know of anyone who is, actually, pro-abortion, come to think of it. And you know what? I think that the moniker “pro-choice” is a poor one. It’s part of the problem. It sounds too much like a casual decision. And of course, it is anything but. I think that the poor name choice demeans the difficult decision that women, either alone or with their partner or their parent or a caring friend, must grapple with. Richard Mourdock, Todd Akin, Paul Ryan and the rest of the jokers in the GOP shouldn’t be in on this very personal crisis resolution.
We should call it something else. But I’ve been unable to come up with a better name, either. Maybe that’s why we got stuck with the one we got.
Nevertheless, we fought the battle over abortion 40 years ago. Forty Fucking Years Ago. And people who knew that it was better to have it safe and regulated as opposed to done in back alleys under unsanitary conditions at the cost of many women’s lives, well they/we won it. It happened just over a decade after the first contraceptives were approved for use in the United States.
And of course, the GOP is against contraception, too.
A Romney presidency will basically guarantee that the folks who don’t really understand how human biology works will control all the things we women need to control our reproductive health. Which, of course, significantly impacts our economic health as well.
[Hey! Maybe this is the GOP jobs plan -- keep women barefoot and pregnant and out of the workplace!]
Many of these Republicans don’t even quite understand how basic human biology works, but they are willing to legislate it nevertheless. They don’t actually know when in the, ummm, process, conception occurs and/or how contraception actually occurs. They don’t understand that oral contraceptives do not prevent the sperm from fertilizing the egg but rather prevents the fertilized egg from implanting in the womb.
So that fertilized egg? If the GOP has its way, that egg becomes more important than the mother. Yup. That’s what the “Personhood” Amendment does. The one VP Candidate Paul Ryan sponsored along with Senate Candidate Todd Akin. It gives property rights to fertilized eggs. Human ones, that is. They haven’t made any inroads in giving chicken eggs the keys to the henhouse. Yet.
A Romney presidency will guarantee Supreme Court appointments will overturn Roe v. Wade. Everybody knows that.
And Obama victory will prevent that. A Democratic Senate will prevent that, too.
But there is more.
In the last 2 years while the GOP has controlled the U.S. House of Representatives, they have passed 55 bills outlawing abortion. They have passed 0 jobs bills. Yeah, that’s a ZERO. A big goose egg (ahem). And of course, they campaigned on JOBS, JOBS, JOBs! in 2010. That’s the promise that gave them the House of Representatives. And then they blocked all bills that would have helped create jobs.
We really need to get rid of these crazies. We need to get rid of the nutcases, the fanatics that want to control our bodies, eliminate our liberties, stop on our freedoms and who then wrap it in the flag and sing The Star Spangled Banner.
Well, Damn it, that’s my flag too, and my national anthem. Keep your crazy ass hands off of them both.
The best line I’ve read about Mitt Romney firing Big Bird:
Let’s channel one of Big Bird’s colleagues, Count von Count, and do some math: The federal government gave $445 million this year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes that money to PBS and, to a lesser degree, NPR member stations across the country.
That $445 million works out to about 1/100 of 1 percent of the federal budget.
That’s like me saying I’m going to lose weight by trimming my nails.
