Wednesday, July 03, 2013

Welcome to D.C. Politics, Circa 2015 or 2017

If you assume (as I do) that the GOP is going to regain the Senate in 2014 and hold both houses of Congress for at least a few more electoral cycles, then it's only a matter of time before this is the kind of news we get from D.C., not just from state capitals. And I must say, this really is the quintessence of modern Republicanism, on so many levels:
Senate tacks sweeping abortion legislation onto Sharia law bill

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Senators on Tuesday tacked a suite of new restrictions and regulations pertaining to abortion clinics onto a bill dealing with the application of foreign laws in North Carolina family courts.

The measure was unveiled unexpectedly during an unusual late-day committee meeting....

Just before 5:20 p.m., Senate Rules Chairman Tom Apodaca, R-Henderson, announced a recess and said the Senate Judiciary 1 Committee would meet at 5:30 p.m.

Until then, the committee's calendar only listed House Bill 695, which prohibits the recognition of foreign law, such as Islamic Sharia law, in family courts.

However, when the committee convened at 5:30 p.m., it quickly took up an amendment to revise HB 695 to include the regulations on abortion.

"They're doing it quietly on Fourth of July weekend because they've seen what's going on in Texas and know that women will turn out," Melissa Reed, vice president of Public Policy for Planned Parenthood Health Systems said, referring to the protests surrounding a similar bill in Texas....
Yup -- Republicans slipped provisions that will shut down all but one abortion clinic in the state into a bill dealing with the menace of sharia law -- that monster the GOP sees under every bed, where the rest of us see nothing.

This is what they're going to be doing to Obama in his last two years or to Hillary in her first two. Or\ this is the kind of legislation that's going to make up the First Hundred Days of President Walker or Christie or Rubio or, God help us, Perry.

A meme going around yesterday was that this is a "historically lazy Congress" because it's managed to pass only 15 legislative items in the first half of the year. But that's not laziness. We have a party that controls the White House and the Senate (at least on paper) and another party that uses House control as a gun to the White House/Senate party's head, to prevent America from being governed at all. Yes, if you're in a hostage situation, the people holding the guns and the people with the guns to their heads are relatively inactive -- but laziness is not the reason.

Once Republicans take the Senate, Congress isn't going to be inactive. Congressional Republicans, like their GOP counterparts in the states, are going to be the worst, full of passionate intensity.

6 comments:

Victor said...

Yup.

The Conservatives have been planning and preparing for this, for over 40 years.

And if they win, they will be ruthless.

NC will be the model.

And a Republican President, like NC's Governor, will gladly sign whatever bills the sociopathic Republicans in the majority of both houses, pass.

And, if nothing changes in the SCOTUS's make-up in the meantime, no matter what, those laws will be deemed Constitutional, by a 5-4 majority - until it's a 6-3 majority, followed by a 7-2 majority, etc.

We live in much too interesting times.

Yastreblyansky said...

Amusing that it's one of those areas where Sharia is quite a lot less repressive than our American Taliban. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_abortion

William Teach said...

So you think that licensing abortion clinics is a bad idea, even though this would protect the safety of women? Do you care more about abortion or women?

Furthermore, what's wrong with making sure these facilities are licensed properly? Instead of shutting down, the non-licensed ones can upgrade. I bet you support Obamacare, right? You surely support all the massive amounts of regulations slapped on citizens, companies, insurance companies, as well as health care providers. You can't have it both ways, chum!

Victor said...

Teach,
I see you're still un-taught.

Abortions clinics ARE licensed, you feckin' imbecile.

What the Republicans are trying to do, is make the requirements to have a legal abortion clinic so onerous, that to run one, a simple clinic has to meet many of the same requirements as does a major hospital.

And they're also trying to make having an abortion as difficult and uncomfortable as possible for women.

The accomplish this, by closing clinics, thus making women drive further and further to get what's still a LEGAL right!

And once they get there, they'll be be forced to have a wand shoved up their vagina's, and listen as some doctor reads a STATE SPONSORED lecture to them, about some fictional after-effects of having an abortion.

People like you, in your small government dreams, want religious men, and male politicians, to make women's reproductive choices, instead of allowing them to do that for themselves.
Why?
Because you know better than 'the little ladies?'
I don't think so - and neither do they.

And, it was because of later-term abortion restrictions, and a state government that couldn't afford to maintain inspections of facilities, that a butcher like Gosnell could operate his chop-shop in PA.

And guess what?
In your self-fulfilling prophesy, when more legal abortion centers are closed, more butchers like Gosnell come out, coat-hangers at the ready.

And more women will die, because the wealthy and powerful will always have access to abortions for their 'little ladies.'

And you'll keep on bitching about the evils of abortions, just like people did before Roe became law.

I'm old enough to remember when stories like Gosnell's were in the news several times a month.

Oh, and on top of that, feckin' eedjit's like you, want to make contraception more difficult, if not impossible, to get.

HERE'S YOUR SMALL GOVERNMENT CONSERVATISM IN ACTION, RIGHT HERE - MORE DEAD WOMEN!!!

I know clowns like you think you're the MLK Jr's, of abortion, fighting for civil and human rights.

All you are, is a large group of misogynistic and racist buttinsky's, who want to control women.

Go back to trolling at your brain-dead rightie sites, you ignorant sociopathic jackass!

The world is getting away from people like you, Teach.

And the world will be a better place for that.

aimai said...

Victor is absolutely right. If someone is telling you, Teach, that this is a fight over liscencing requirements then you are being lied to. If you are simply repeating falsehoods without regard to their truth then you are lying to us (and to other people). Which is it?

aimai said...

I think what gets my goat the most about these absurd intrusions into women's health care is that there are areas of health care where such intrusions are really worth while: cosmetic surgery, dietary supplements, sale of organs, blood and organ donations. But women's health care seems to be one of the few places where "let the buyer beware" and "the free market will take care of that" is not the Republican mantra at all.

Even if you took seriously their argument that there's something "wrong" with abortion clinics why is this the area in which the free market doesn't solve the problem? Everything else--even extremely dangerous professions like mining or working in or near a fertilizer plant the Republican legislature in Texas (for example) thinks should be entirely unregulated. Despite known deaths and mass destructive potential. Yet something involving women's choice of what to do with a woman's own body/health is considered something that needs to be legislated by the government?

I'm not surprised, but it is galling to have to fight to protect workers against corporate depredations, and fight to protect the autonomy of women against government interference. Its like these people don't have any princples at all.