President Obama has often been criticized for not being more vociferous about what he has accomplished for Americans. This 17 minute documentary narrated by Tom Hanks changes that. Also, don’t forget the site What The Fuck Has Obama Done So Far? which was produced independently a few years ago.
All of these happened just within a span of 6 months during the 2012 Republican primaries. It is a preview of what American women can expect more of with a Republican President or more Republicans elected into the government.
- The Blunt Amendment. Reasonable religious exemptions weren’t enough for Roy Blunt. This amendment would have allowed your employer – not your doctor – to decide what kind of health care you could get based on his or her own personal moral or religious convictions.
- The All-Male Birth Control Panel, or the Man Panel. Congressman Darrell Issa convened a panel to discuss the coverage of birth control – but refused to include any women.
- Susan G. Komen Foundation defunds Planned Parenthood. Komen opted to cut off funding to the largest provider of reproductive health services in the US because of their new VP’s objection to a mere 3% of their activities.
- Rush Limbaugh Calls Sandra Fluke a Prostitute and a Slut. After Sandra Fluke stood up for women everywhere, Rush Limbaugh took to the airwaves and called her a prostitute and a slut for speaking out in favor of birth control coverage. He also said she should have to put videos of her having sex online to compensate the taxpayers who “are going to pay for your contraceptives.” Classy.
- Forced Trans-Vaginal Ultrasounds. Republican legislators in Virginia invited the commonwealth into the exam room when they proposed a bill that would require women seeking abortions to undergo an invasive, medically-unnecessary vaginal probe before their procedure.
- Texas defunds Planned Parenthood. Under Governor Rick Perry, the state of Texas banned funding to Planned Parenthood because it provides abortion services. In the end, though, this fight has only served to hurt low-income women looking for breast cancer screenings, birth control and pap smears.
- Women in the Military Should “Expect” to be Raped. Responding to a 64% increase in the reports of rape and violent sexual assaults in the military, Fox News pundit Liz Trotta responds, “What did they expect?” She goes on to say that there is a bureaucracy of people to support these women who are being “raped too much.”
- Foster Friess Suggests Women Put Aspirin Between Their Knees. Rick Santorum supporter, Foster Friess, reminisced about back in his day when ladies put aspirin between their knees for birth control. Back in his day, people also died of polio.
- Santorum wants to deny birth control coverage because he thinks it’s available and affordable. Despite the fact that most forms of birth control still require a prescription and 1 in 3 women have reported struggling to afford birth control. Santorum feels there is no barrier to access, so it shouldn’t be covered by insurance.
- Mitt Romney doesn’t understand a woman’s reproductive system. Romney has publicly supported “personhood amendments,” which would ban abortion by declaring life begins at conception. When asked about how this affects birth control, Romney seemed to be completely unaware that hormonal forms of birth control stop implantation, not conception and would be banned under any personhood amendment.
From here
In regards to Rick Santorum’s “Google” problem:
From Wikipedia:
In an interview with the Associated Press on April 7, 2003, Santorum said there is a relationship between the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal and liberalism and relativism. He argued that moral relativism involves accepting any adult consensual behavior in the privacy of people’s homes, even if the behavior might otherwise be considered deviant. Santorum believes this attitude leads to an unhealthy culture.[3]
He said that, while he had no problem with homosexuality, he did have a problem with homosexual acts, “as I would with acts of other, what I would consider to be, acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships. And that includes a variety of different acts, not just homosexual.” He continued:
” We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now, that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose. Because, again, I would argue, they undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does.”
He said he was arguing against any relationship other than marriage between a man and a woman, the basis in his view of a stable society: “That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be.”
The result of that quote was sex columnist Dan Savage and his followers putting up the site spreadingsantorum.com that redefined the word “santorum” to refer to an unpleasant byproduct of anal sex. As more people posted links to spreadingsantorum.com on web sites, the higher spreadingsantorum.com rose to the top of search engine results when people Googled on “Rick Santorum”.
Every good idea on the internet gets repeated. Several months ago a story came out that Mitt Romney strapped his dog in an airtight box to the roof of his car for a family trip. The dog was terrified and defecated all over the car. Romney’s response was to pull over, hose down the car, hose down the dog, put the dog back in the box on the roof and to continue on.
Dog lovers, still enraged, have taken a page out of Dan Savage’s book and given Mitt Romeny his own “Google problem” with spreadingromney.com. The site redefines the word “romney” to mean “to defecate in terror” and the site points to Huffington Post article that re-broke the story. Enough people have clicked on spreadingromney.com and posted it to their sites to make it the 3rd result of all Google searches on “Romney”.
In the current age of super pacs and billionaires leading the election around by the nose for their own benefit, I really enjoy the democratic nature of these two gestures of disapproval. Ordinary people, can, for a moment stand toe-to-toe with the blue bloods to express ourselves.