Not just a fetus fetishist . . .

That's a photo of Troy Newman, of Operation Rescue, from a collection of YouTubes by JaguarJ0nes, an abortion clinic escort.

It's at about the 1:30 mark. The clinic escorts had brought out some plastic speculums to bang together to drown out the noise made by the anti-abortion harassers. Troy Newman became so utterly fascinated with the speculum that he wanted to buy one. The narrator says: 'I'm not sure what he wanted to do. I'll let you figure that out.'

What do you think? Medical-instrument fetish? Medical-instruments-associated-with-lady-parts fetish?

Or?

Theocracy in the US, continued

In-frikkin-credible. From Politico (emphasis mine):

Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson held up introducing his amendment to tighten restrictions on federal funding for abortion to give Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch and the Catholic bishops more time to review it, reports CQ's Alex Wayne.

Wayne reports (subscription required):

But Nelson decided later Thursday to hold off after Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, said he thought that the measure was being rushed to the floor. Hatch had expected to be the lead sponsor of the amendment, and he said he thought it was “discourteous” that Nelson was preparing — apparently at the behest of his leadership — to call up the amendment without Hatch’s consent.

Nelson said that the amendment’s language was not finished, and that groups opposed to abortion — notably the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops — needed more time to review it. Additional time, he added, might lead to greater bipartisan support.

Unless Nelson and Hatch depart significantly from Stupak’s language, their amendment has little chance of adoption. The Stupak language would prohibit the public option from covering most abortions and would forbid private insurers to offer plans covering elective abortion to people who buy them using federal subsidies.

As Sinclair Lewis is supposed to have said: 'When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.'

And there doesn't seem to be much that can done about such theocratic lobbying.

"Stupak Language".

The Fetus©™ fetishists in the US Senate, led by Democrat (yes, Democrat) Ben Nelson want the same "Stupak Language".

Abortion is likely to be the next issue brought to the floor for debate following votes Thursday on women's health care and Medicare. Nelson said he is circulating an amendment that closely mirrors one approved in the House and drafted by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.). ...

"It is Stupak language," Nelson said. "I've said at the end of the day if it doesn't have Stupak language on abortion in it I won't vote to move it off the floor." Asked whether that meant he was intent on stalling the bill, Nelson said: "I just said that, didn't I?

Many of Nelson's colleagues did not support his amendment, and did not believe he could rally enough opposition (Republican) votes to carry it.

Stupak’s measure would restrict women who receive federal subsidies from buying abortion coverage on insurance exchanges set up by the government. ...

Abortion-rights activists are not taking any chances. NARAL Pro-Choice America announced Thursday afternoon that it would air television ads in markets around the country, including Maine and Virginia, criticizing Nelson and Stupak for putting a debate over abortion in the middle of the healthcare debate.

“Why would politicians like Bart Stupak introduce abortion into America’s healthcare debate?” asks a female narrator in the spot, which features a photo of Nelson. “Why are they trying to make it more difficult than ever before for women to buy insurance coverage for abortion in the new healthcare system … even if they use their own money?”

Not that different from what Forrest Gump's mother said: Stupak is as stupak does.

The Wedge

I am depressed but not surprised by the healthcare debate in the US.

Again, we're shown that women's rights are ALWAYS negotiable.

Some commenters like Megan McArdle take women to task for making a big deal out of nothing much really.

Most of them seem to come from feminists who blithely assume away concerns about the personhood of the fetus, and the staunch political opposition to subsidized abortion from those who lean towards the "person" side. This allows them to spend 1,000 words or so having a completely irrelevant discussion of the disparate effects of the Stupak amendment on poor women, arguing that women's reproductive health care is too real health care, and similarly unrelated side points.

Talk about irrelevant . . . Dig this:

Last time I looked, there were over 1 million abortions a year in the United States. The most methodologically shoddy, activist-induced statistics on the number who die from lack of health insurance is 44,000, and the real number is much lower. The abortion statistics, on the other hand, are carefully collected numbers from a pro-choice group. Even if you only value a fetus as 1/20th of a person, the fetuses win.

She says that only 13% of abortions are insurance-funded. So, taking her own number of one million (which is too high, by the way), that measly 13% works out to 130,000 women per year having to pony up their own dough.

And for those women too poor? Fuck 'em.

The women who genuinely can't afford $500 bucks for an abortion are the women closest to the poverty line. Those women will be covered by Medicare, and they won't get abortion coverage anyway in most states.

There's much more, but as I said, it depresses me.

McArdle is a business writer. Nancy Folbre, on the other hand, is an actual economics professor. And she gets it.

With sex (as with food and exercise) Americans don’t seem, on average, to be very good at planning. Almost one-half of all pregnancies — and about one-third of births — are described as “unintended.”

We need insurance for a reason.

Nonetheless, despite heroic lobbying and phone-banking by people like Marta Evry and Jane Hamsher, I think the misogynist Christofascists are going to win.

Because paying for other people's (ahem) abortions really really bugs people.

And here's what I find really depressing -- the anti-choice forces here in Canada will get revved by the success of this tactic and push it even harder here.

While a recent poll by Angus-Reid clearly shows that Canadians are much more liberal than Murricans in their views (support for both abortion and same-sex relationships is up significantly -- for same-sex relationships by 7 points -- over the past two years), the question that polls 'best' for the anti-choicers, even here, is 'Should government fund abortion?'

Sorry, I couldn't find another source for this Environics poll:

The disconnect between official policy and the opinions of Canadians is even more stark in the area of abortion funding. Most abortions in Canada, which now total well over 100,000 annually, are paid for by taxpayers through the publicly funded health care system. Yet when asked, 68% of Canadians polled said that abortions should be either privately funded (18%) or only tax-funded in cases of medical emergency "such as a threat to the mother's life or in cases of rape or incest." Only 26% support tax-funding of all abortions, down from 30% last year.

They're spinning of course. An Angus-Reid poll from 2008 found that '43% say the health care system should fund abortions whenever they are requested'.


But still, this is their wedge.

Who? Us? Freep?

Just like Canadian Cynic, we at DAMMIT JANET! are far too principled to encourage reverse freeping of the braindead Canadian Blog Awards.

But -- speaking of braindead -- just have a look at which total idiot appears here. Twice.

No, nope, uh-uh, we'd never advocate helping to further discredit a seriously fucked-up awards event. But, you gotta admit, sometimes grrrlcotting feels just a tad passive.

ADDED: Here, about-to-be-most-awesomest Canadian blogger, Dodo, demonstrates her fascination with shitting in a bag. No shit. Vote Dodo!

My Big Misunderstanding

Some readers may remember that I was evicted from my home of 28 years last March.

I intended to return -- as is my right -- but because of the long fight we three tenants put up, the landscum was seriously pissed at us and was screwing around with the renovations and not giving us any information about when we could return.

And some readers may remember that in July this year, I got notice that I was going to be evicted from my temporary digs.

I have updates on both situations.

In late September, we finally heard when we could move back: the two other fighters on December 1; moi, ringleader and chief pain-in-the-ass, to be screwed around for a further month, so January 1. January 1 being both a stat holiday and a Friday, I planned to do the actual move on the Monday the 4th and use professional movers.

July's bad news about having to leave the temporary place fizzled. I heard no more about it. So, while the uncertainty was driving me bats, I kept my fingers crossed and hoped for the best.

On October 2, there was a knock at the door. Landscum's agent telling me the move was on again. I pleaded with him. 'I have a date now. I'm leaving here in early January. Can't I stay for three more months?' Nope. Gotta be out by the end of the month. But not to worry, his guys would move me to a space in sweetie's building (I'm living with sweetie; his landlord owns this place too). I pleaded with him some more, embarrassing description of which I'll spare you.

Gotta move THREE times in nine months.

Agent had said there were several vacant spaces in sweetie's building. I collared one of the maintenance guys and asked him to show them to me. There were three, all huge, one with no windows, but wotthehell, eh?

I called agent and left a message that any of them would do, but that I need a firm date because I've got clients and deadlines. No return call. I called again, left another message, no return call.

I realize that the word insanity should not be misused, but I do believe that I was seriously not myself there for a while. And I think sweetie would confirm that, poor guy.

Finally, I emailed the agent to say that I was trying to be accommodating and would he PLEASE GET THE FUCK IN TOUCH WITH ME??!!?

No response.

In the meantime, I had called the previous tenant here to tell her again that I was being tossed out and perhaps she'd like to come and get the crap of hers (tables, filing cabinet) that I'd been storing for her for free for eight months.

Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, she said again.

So, October draws to a close. No contact from agent and previous tenant does not appear.

Early November, previous tenant calls. She's coming over. And does, two hours after she said she'd be here. But, whatever. . .

She tells me that she has been talking to the agent who told her that I don't have to leave here.

WHAAAAAT?

She elaborates: 'He said it was all a big misunderstanding.'

Gee. My mistake. I heard 'you've got to be out by the end of the month' but he actually knocked on my door to tell me that I could stay until whenever.

(She took a toaster and an electric kettle and said she'd be back for the other crap. Yeah, right.)

I go home to sweetie's and tell him.

Sweetie's got his own problems with the landlord. His lease is up and he has not been given any indication of what the new terms may be. For months, he's been hearing from other tenants that rents are being raised by 20%. People are freaking out and leaving. Hence, vacant spaces for moi.

He's very worried. Finally, he button-holes the agent and gets more assurances that his lease is soon-come and he gets the story behind my 'big misunderstanding'.

According to the agent, the actual landlord-guy asked 'someone' (agent was coy about who the 'someone' was) what I am paying here. Someone said: 'Oh, I don't know, something like $85 a month'. (No. More like four times that. And I'd been told to write the cheques to landlord personally, not the corporation.) Oddly, landlord believes 'someone', goes ballistic and says I gotta get out of here.

Somewhere in there between the agent knocking on my door and the previous tenant telling me I did not have to vacate, sense returned to landlord and his minions.

But they didn't think it necessary to tell ME.

OK, here's the kicker. Two times over my tenancy here, I've noticed on my bank statement that rent cheques hadn't been cashed. Two times I called the office to inform them of the fact. Once I was asked for a replacement cheque, once I guess they found it because I didn't hear anything more.

Again in November, statement revealed that rent cheque had not been cashed. I checked again online and it still hasn't been cashed.

Third time's the charm. I have not called the office.

Oh, and sweetie's rent did not go up by 20%, more like 5%, which he can handle.

Man, will I be glad to get outta this frying pan and back into my old fire.

But I have the feeling that the housing gods are not done with me yet.

Uganda's 'Death Penalty for Homosexuals' Bill: The USian connection

Unfrickingbelievable.

As a gay Ugandan, Frank Mugisha has endured insults from strangers, hate messages on his phone, police harassment and being outed in a tabloid as one of the country's "top homos". That may soon seem like the good old days.

Life imprisonment is the minimum punishment for anyone convicted of having gay sex, under an anti-homosexuality bill currently before Uganda's parliament. If the accused person is HIV positive or a serial offender, or a "person of authority" over the other partner, or if the "victim" is under 18, a conviction will result in the death penalty.

Members of the public are obliged to report any homosexual activity to police with 24 hours or risk up to three years in jail – a scenario that human rights campaigners say will result in a witchhunt. Ugandans breaking the new law abroad will be subject to extradition requests.

"The bill is haunting us," said Mugisha, 25, chairman of Sexual Minorities Uganda, a coalition of local lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex groups that will all be banned under the law. "If this passes we will have to leave the country."

Surprise, surprise, the Murrican Kristian Taliban is party to it. Watch.

More riveting than the Ol'-lymp-dicks events, actually.

Some court cases are headline grabbers, and rightfully so.

The female ski jumpers who lost their appeal in the BC superior court system aren't going away. They have directed their lawyer to obtain leave to address the Supreme Court of Canada on their behalf.

“We believe our argument has been misunderstood and that a matter of national importance is at stake,” Ross Clark, the women's lawyer said in a news release. “This case isn’t just about women ski jumpers. It is about the interpretation and application of the Charter and whether the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee, in carrying out an ascribed activity of government, can be forced by a foreign entity to put a discriminatory decision into effect in Canada.

“Gender discrimination is at issue here and discrimination is something we do not tolerate in Canada. We hope our highest court in the land will take a look at this case and grant our declaration” ...

Good for them. You go, grrrls!

Bad(ly written) sex gets award.

A cringe-inducing passage in best-selling novel The Kindly Ones that compares a sexual encounter to a battle with an one-eyed Greek mythological monster has won Britain's Bad Sex in Fiction Prize.

The editors of the Literary Review magazine said that American author Jonathan Littell won the award for describing sex as "a jolt that emptied my head like a spoon scraping the inside of a soft-boiled egg."

From here.

Littell's novel which was originally published in French, won Le Prix Goncourt - a prestigious literary award - last year.

The Bad Sex In Fiction Award was picked up by his agent.

Perhaps they'll blame the translator? Telegraph blogger Oliver Marre has a different take on the award.

The Bad Sex Awards are – and always have been, really – about laughing at sex, not showing up bad writing. ...

There are two types of winner of the award: the big name literary writer on the one hand, and the English scribbler – who quite possibly, like last year’s winner Rachel Johnson – would be thrilled by the prize because, likely as not, her aim was to make people laugh and squirm in a very British way and laughing at sex was high in her armoury of methods. ...

Booker judge Lucasta Miller was interviewed about whether it’s difficult to writed about sex by the BBC and said metaphorical descriptions were “toe-curling”.

Writed? Shouldn't that, in the spirit of the award, be writhed?