Things You Probably Already Know

March 31, 2012 in Abortion, Messenging, People Who Are Wrong, Ranty Rants, Vote! | Tags: , , | by | 3 comments

Someone the other day asked me if I thought all these Republican shenanigans with birth control and ultrasound raping and single mom shaming, etc, etc, was shocking. My answer? Fuck no. This is Republicanism at its finest. For years and years they have been hiding behind this “compassionate conservative” bullshit. See, people used to think Republicans were mean heartless assholes (because they were) so they had to pretend that their incredibly heartless asshole policies were really just a way to help poor (stupid, lazy, black, female, immigrant) people. But they’ve been spewing that bullshit for so long, that people have forgotten and they are free to come out of their awful troll shells and say what they really think, such as:

And a billion gillion other horrific things. This is a dumb list because you already know all of it. No matter how much you pay attention to the news, you can probably name like 12 quotes from this month alone about how women should embrace forced sterilization and set aside their kidneys for potential mandatory fetal transplants. They are a parody of themselves. If Republicans had their way, women would exercise their voting rights by encouraging their husbands to vote. This should not be a surprise to you. If you have a uterus, Republicans would like you to sit down, shut up, have babies, and make them dinner. Republican women would like you to do all those things and join a book club where you can read the Bible and Atlas Shrugged and talk about how sad sluts who don’t do those things are. This is not a new war on women, this is an open war on women. Better start pressing your handmaid uniforms!

With all that said, are you worried? Can these schmucks possibly win this game? Obama is 20 points ahead of Mittens and 26 ahead of Santorum in lady votes.  I think all this lady-hating, or lating, is confusing them; maybe they think if they talk about silencing women enough, women will just be silent. We’re a majority. And for the last couple decades, we vote more. My point is… I like it. Every time a Republican talks about whores, a baby feminist gets her wings…I mean… wordpress.

Another Post About Lady Parts

December 19, 2011 in Helpful Tips, Human Behavior, PSA | Tags: , , , , | by | Leave a comment

With the release of the latest Twilight movie and TLC’s new show, Laugh at These Awkward People! or Nervous Adults Who Can’t Kiss or whatever, which is  all about people who are still virgins even though they are oldish, virginity has been on my mind a lot lately. In that light, I’d like to make an announcement:

Virginity isn’t a thing.

For real, you guys, it’s 2011. Can we all please stop pretending that the general vicinity that your genitalia have been relative to another person’s genitalia is a state of being? It’s just this word we made up to shame or reward ladies before we had paternity tests. Doctors can’t look at your vagina and be like, “yep, this one’s always been penis free!” because hymens break all the time for no reason (or for the obvious reason that tampons are giant wads of dry cotton in  hardish cardboard tubes) and sometimes never break, or don’t exist in the first place. And let’s pretend for a minute that there were any kind of expectation on men to stay sex-free (OK, OK, I’m sure in the history of oppressive sex ideas, some men have been expected to abstain, but let’s get real, even in most fundamentalist sects, guys’ sexuality is given a pass or at least ignored) there is obviously no physical difference before or after.

Emotionally… sure. For some people having sex is a life changing thing. And for some people (who are just as valid and great) it’s not anything. Likewise, going to Graceland could be a momentous occasion (for someone, I mean, who may or may not be me [OK, it's me... Graceland was like the 4th biggest event in my life]), but there’s no special word for people who have never been to that hallowed icon of Americana in Memphis. Experiences are what you make them, and consensual sex can be a big deal or not. Yes, it is possible to regularly have safe sex with no unintended consequences of any kind (I’ve got years of baby- and infection-free sex under my belt!).

The whole idea is so vague and stupid it’s laughable. We seem to universally accept that it involves penis-in-vagina intercourse, even though there are way more (arguably) intimate and/or scandalous and kinky things to do on the spectrum of sexing. There’s also a whole group of people who have sex without penises or vaginas. Are all gay people virgins? Or just all lesbians, since, for something that’s totally aimed at ladies, the whole thing is completely penis-centric . Penis in Vag (or PIV for you savvy interneters) penetration (alone) doesn’t do it for 75% percent of women. SEVENTY FIVE. But, somehow, it’s the gold-standard in sex? Super lame. Unfortunately, for a lot of straight couples, PIV is sex with those things that actually get women off considered extras. And I will part from my radical feminist sisters in saying that I know there are a lot of women who enjoy PIV with or without an orgasm, but the fact that the male orgasm is required for our definition of sex, while the female orgasm is looked at as a bonus at best, and an annoyance at worst, is a crazy level of fucked-up-ness.

Which brings us to the part of this post where I try to tone down my asshole-ish nature and not offend everyone I know. Because there are a ton of women in my life who are waiting until they are married to have sex. They are smart, intelligent, strong, beautiful women whose convictions and commitment I whole-heartedly admire. But the idea that virginity is sacred or needs to be “saved” is, in my opinion, a fundamental misunderstanding of what sex is, but also and more importantly, what marriage is.

The idea that intercourse is more important or intimate than sleeping in late on Sundays or inside jokes or going through the crisis of losing a job or a loved one together is preposterous. Yes, it is part of an intimate relationship, but it’s just one part. And it can’t be used up or ruined just because you’ve done it before (Side note because some adults still believe this bizarre myth: sex does not make vaginas “loose” [barfbarfbarf]. Vaginas are made out of muscles [what did you think they were made of?] and muscles don’t’ work that way. It’s science.).   It will also never live up to years of anticipation and fantasy. You may or may not like your first time. If it’s on your wedding night, I assure you that you won’t have the energy to do it properly.

It’s funny to me that it gets so wrapped up in the “family values” package, since I think the abstinence campaign really denigrates what marriage is. Like the only thing different between being married and dating is boning. As if marriage were so fragile that simply knowing your partner had been with someone else could break it. Marriage isn’t a jack-in-the-box where if you pop it early there’s nothing left to look forward to. It’s this (ideally) life-long journey—an experiment in sacrifice and devotion and voluntary obligations and unconditional commitment and personal transformation. You don’t have to manufacture some kind of surprise or novel thing for it; marriage will give you discoveries and adventures all by itself.

Which is not to say that it is in any way my place to tell anyone who to have sex with or when to do it. If waiting until marriage is the right time, then that’s what you should do. However, like food and sleep, a healthy sex life is a need for most humans and denying it when you are ready, when you do have someone you want it with, can make a person crazy. It can also make a person do crazy things like have unprotected sex or get married to someone they just want to have sex with.

Virginity is just another way of saying that sex is what we value in women. It’s the other side of the teenage-girls-in-stilettos-and-micro-skirts coin. On the one side you’re objectified as a thing to have sex with, and on the other side you’re objectified as an “untouched” thing that only one lucky person gets to have sex with, but in either case, it’s all about being a thing to have sex with. Who has or has not been in your vagina has nothing to do with who you are. It’s not a reflection on your “purity” and it’s not a badge of honor or shame. It’s not a thing. Really. I promise.

This Week in Asshole White Guys Give Stupid Advice News

December 15, 2011 in Good Plans | Tags: , , , , | by | 2 comments

This asshole white guy gave some really terrible advice to poor black kids. It basically consisted of “Just be exceptional. And really, really lucky.”

Maria Bamford has a really funny bit about being a comedian and the advice everyone gives her which is generally something like “If I were you, I would get a TV show, make a million dollars and then just coast.” I find people have this kind of advice for all walks of life, but financially stable white men seem to be particularly fond of giving it to people without their privileges. Are you a poor black kid? Just find a computer, home school yourself and coast. Are you repeatedly sexually harassed or assaulted by strangers on the street or at parties? Just wear conservative clothes, take a self-defense class, and coast.  Are you fleeing from a life of poverty to give your kids a shot at a future? Just become a citizen the legal way and coast. Are you being threatened daily because some people don’t like your sexual orientation? Just don’t tell people and coast! Do police disproportionately target your demographic way more than any other? Just always follow every traffic law, be nice to cops, and coast. Are you saddened by the lack of positive representation of people who look like you in popular media and offended by the gross, stereotypical tropes you get instead? Just write a script, raise millions of dollars to have it produced, and coast (this particular gem is almost verbatim what a friend recently told me). It’s so easy! Why haven’t you people thought of this earlier!

Let me give you some advice. If your solution to systemic oppression is to tell the oppressed individuals to “Just do ___,” shut the fuck up. Seriously, right now, shut the fuck up. If it were as easy as teaching yourself to read/using the internet/driving better/using a condom/learning self-defense/dressing differently/making lentil soup/getting a job at McDonald’s/telling your boss to stop/becoming a citizen/being above average, smart, or gifted/raising millions of dollars and MAKING A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE/ just being exceptional, and if any of those things were something someone could wake up and choose to do, there wouldn’t be a problem.

In other words, why don’t you just stop perpetuating ignorance and bigotry, start dismantling the systemic injustice you and anyone with privilege in this country benefits from, and, you know… coast.

Edited to add: I have a new facebook page that has sort of embarrassingly low “likes” and, while I hate doing this, if maybe you wanted to like it or something that would be cool or whatever youguysIhatepromotingmyselfI’msosorry.  Affirmation!

An Open Letter to John J. Wall

September 6, 2011 in Good Plans | Tags: , , , | by | 7 comments

The other day I received this letter as a forward:

Dear American liberals, leftists, social pro-gressives, socialists, regressives, Marxists, and Obama supporters, et. al.:

We have stuck together since the late 1950s for the sake of the kids, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has clearly run its course.

Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right for us all, so let’s just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.

Here is a model separation agreement:

1. Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by land mass, each taking a similar portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy. Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides had such distinct and disparate tastes.

2. We don’t like redistributive taxes, so you can keep them.

3. You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU.

4. Since you hate guns and war, we’ll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA, and the military.

5. We’ll take the nasty, smelly oil industry and you can go with wind, solar, and bio-diesel.

6. You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore, and Rosie O’Donnell. You are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them.

7. We’ll keep capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart, and Wall Street.

8. You can have your beloved lifelong welfare dwellers, food stamps, homeless home-boys, hippies, druggies, and illegal aliens.

9. We’ll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO’s and rednecks.

10. We’ll keep the Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood .

11. You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we’ll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us.

12. You can have the peace-niks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we’ll help provide them security.

13. We’ll keep our Judeo-Christian values.

14. You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism, political correctness, and Shirley McLain.. You can also have the U.N., but we will no longer be paying the bill.

15. We’ll keep the SUV’s, pickup trucks, and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Yugo station wagon you can find.

16. You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors..

17. We’ll continue to believe healthcare is an earned luxury and not a right.

18. We’ll keep “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “The National Anthem.”

19. I’m sure you’ll be happy to substitute “Imagine”, “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing”, “Kum Ba Ya,” or “We Are the World”.

20. We’ll practice trickledown economics and you can continue to give trickle up poverty your best shot.

21. Since it often so offends you, we’ll keep our history, our name and our constitution and our flag.

22. Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along to other like-minded liberal and conservative patriots and if you do not agree, just hit delete. In the spirit of friendly parting, I’ll bet you answer which one of us will need whose help in 15 years.

Sincerely,

John J. Wall

Law Student and an American

P.S.: Also, please take Ted Turner, Sean Penn, Martin Sheen, Barbara Streisand, and Jane Fonda with you.

P.S.S..: And you won’t have to “Press 1 for English” when you call our country.

John J. Wall, you have no idea how many times we have asked ourselves if this would be possible. Most of your terms sound reasonable, though I have to say I’m a little disappointed by some of your stereotypes. We get Yugo station wagons? Did you miss car day at the Fox News School of Leftist Generalizations? We get the hybrid/electric cars, thankyaverymuch. Before we proceed, however, let me make sure I have your demands correct.

We get judges and an organization that has been fighting for civil rights for almost 100 years, and you get guns and the military? I’m not sure “Democrats hate war” will hold up considering, um, all the actions of every elected Democrat of the last 10 years, give or take about 20.  I also suspect you’re going to have a pretty hard time filling your ranks if you’re giving us the minorities and the poors. With that said, you can keep your military industrial complex and we will happily take the Judicial system and civil rights. I hope it works out for you!

We’ll definitely take green and new technologies off your hands. I honestly don’t care about Oprah, Michael Moore, or Rosie O’Donnell, but good job with the fat jokes! Those people do struggle with their weight! HILARIOUS! I can’t wait for a country free of our comics so that classic Republican humor can really thrive! You might be in Republimerica if… you’ve ever accidentally lit the smog around your house on fire with your unfiltered smokes!

You can have capitalism, though I doubt you have any better an understanding of that economic principle than you do the concept of socialism. We’ll take those progressive taxes and all the social programs they fund. I’m sure if you ask nicely your corporate overlords will let you sleep in one of their parking garages when you stop making them money. We’ll take the “welfare dwellers, food stamps, homeless home-boys, hippies, druggies, and illegal aliens,” or to cut through your code, “brown people.” You can have your raging racism! You’ve given us “Hollywood” and “NBC,” but I assume that includes all of the “liberal media,” in which case I hope we’ll still be able to download your Fox News produced movies of nothing but Bible stories. They will make fantastic drinking games. I have to object to giving up “Judeo-Christian values” since we all know the Jews and liberal Christians over here are going to want to practice freely. We’ll be keeping our freedom of religion along with our civil rights, though it will actually apply to all religions in our country. And yes, we’ll take the “peace-nicks” (again, this is a little dated, can you get a newer version of Trite Clichés for Dummies?), protesters, and all those other people who dare to critically question the status quo.

You can continue to believe healthcare is an earned luxury and not a right. That healthcare is an earned luxury and not a right. That healthcare is a luxury and not a right. Healthcare is a luxury. Sorry, in theory I know that’s your position, it’s just hard to believe that humans can actually espouse such unbelievable, inhumane bullshit out loud. You actually think that being able to not die of preventable conditions is something for only rich people. Sure, I might have called you racist, classist, and misogynist, but sometimes I forget that it’s not rhetoric, you actually have no problem letting the poor, disproportionately made up of women and people of color, die in the streets if they can’t find a way into one of the most corrupt systems we have, the heath insurance industry.  Please, by all means, you take that. Have fun.

Trickle down economics is all yours. Which brings me to evidence-based policies, science, and education. You keep believing the only science you need is in a 2000 year old book, and trying to make that “trickle-down” shit work, despite it’s failure to help any non-rich person ever in the history of America. We’ll keep our evidence-based sex education, prison reform, environmental policies, and Keynesian economics.  Oh yeah, and our universities, since there’s nothing you people hate more than education. I wish you luck with your for-profit doctors and their Genesis-based understanding of anatomy.

Which brings us to names and flags and songs. Listen, I like those songs and our flag, and I’m a little surprised you don’t want to just switch over to the good ol’ Battle Flag of the Confederacy, but I’ll concede. Considering we’re going to have all the artists, intellectuals, and general creatives (not to mention the gays!) I’m sure we can come up with something to replace them all.

All in all, John, I think this sounds like a pretty great idea. I look forward to our amicable split, and in the spirit of goodwill, let me extend the first invitation. If you ever get tired of your dirty, unregulated, uneducated, gun-littered, military state, where the only civil rights question is whether or not the rich can legally marry their bank accounts and the carcasses of the poor rot in the streets, you are more than welcome to vacation with us. You may have to pay some reasonable taxes on your vacation home, however, so I won’t expect to see you too soon.

Sincerely,

Amber

Pisces and Cheese Enthusiast (Because titles are just facts about ourselves, right?)

P.S. We’ve already established that we’re taking Hollywood, so you don’t have to specify actors. That said, you can keep Kirk Cameron.

P.P.S. “P.S.” stands for “Post Script,” so a second post script would be “Post Post Script,” not “Post Script Script.” But then again, your new home puts no value on education, so I doubt it will matter.

Penn Jillette is a Self-Righteous Jerkoff

August 20, 2011 in People Who Are Wrong | Tags: , , , | by | 6 comments

Remember when you could afford Showtime and watched that show Bullshit (shows stop airing when I can’t watch them, right?)? Penn Jillette, star of said show, is a raging libertarian, and as such wrote an article for CNN Opinion on Wednesday called “I don’t know, so I’m an atheist libertarian”. It’s fairly short if you want to read it, but if not, I’ll summarize: Piers Morgan asked him some admittedly stupid questions during an interview like, if you don’t believe in God, how does everything exist, or some other nonsense like it. Penn admits that he doesn’t know and goes on to explain that not knowing is a noble and important distinction that he draws between himself and all these other assholes that claim to “know” “things.” Not knowing, and not being so arrogant as to push his lack of knowledge on others, is the reason he’s a libertarian.  That’s right, this smug comedian-magician, who has an entire show dedicated to pointing out how dumb people are, is a libertarian because he just doesn’t know. (Side note: have you ever met a libertarian?  With only one exception, every single libertarian I have ever met has been an incredibly arrogant white guy who thinks they’re the first person to ever discover the Constitution and Keynesian-competing economic theories. I digress.) He goes on to say:

It’s amazing to me how many people think that voting to have the government give poor people money is compassion. Helping poor and suffering people is compassion. Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral self-righteous bullying laziness.

Whoa, what? I don’t recall voting for the government to use guns to give people money. But according to Penn and his hordes of college-aged male followers, all government is force. Many will say all government is violence. Penn justifies it thusly:

People try to argue that government isn’t really force. You believe that? Try not paying your taxes… When they come to get you for not paying your taxes, try not going to court. Guns will be drawn. Government is force — literally, not figuratively.

Oh shit man, you just blew my mind! But then all country clubs are force too. Don’t believe me? Try going in without paying your membership dues! They will physically remove you from the club, and that’s not a figure of speech! Don’t forget apartments! Try not paying your rent! They will not let you stay if you say that you really want to! Apartment dwelling is violence! And strip clubs! Try having sex in the Champagne Room! The bouncer will throw your ass out on the street! Literally! Strip clubs are robbing us of our liberty!

Anyway he ends the article by saying that he doesn’t know what’s best so he’s not going to force anyone to do anything. You know, he supes thinks we should help people and he hopes those poors will get taken care of, but since government is one giant gun, it’s not fair to use it to get kids medicine. If Penn doesn’t know the answer, well, then there isn’t one, and the best we can do is hope for spontaneous charity.

Now, I know I’m a classic progressive who just wants to make all your decisions for you and kill you if you disagree with me, but I can admit that I don’t have all the answers. Social issues are hard to solve. I do hope that individuals will step up and help their neighbors. I think it would be great if the government didn’t have to do anything. I would love to live in a world where living wages evolved naturally and the free market made health care affordable for all!

However, unlike the pinnacle of humility and reason that is Penn Jillette, I do know some things. I know that self-regulating markets don’t. I know that time and time again corporations have proven that they care a hell of a lot more for profit margins than they do for human life. And I know that in one of the richest countries in the world no one should starve to death.

There aren’t a ton of countries where a self-proclaimed former carny-trash and weird kid can grow up to be a famous person who makes a shit ton of money and writes for CNN. America is pretty great that way. We have a booming entertainment industry. We create roads so patrons can drive to your Vegas show and we provide police to protect you from your stalker fans. We aim for a society where boys and girls of any race can grow up with the privilege of believing their well-off parents had nothing to do with their success, start telling everyone to get on with the boot-strap pulling, and decide that the government, elected by and accountable to them, is evil and should be dismantled… providing you with more devotees. You’re welcome.

America gives you a hell of a lot, and because of that you have to pay membership dues to do business here. Or call it rent for living here. Or refraining from sex in the metaphorical Champagne Room, which would be maybe adhering to certain regulations like filling out your DBA correctly or something, I DON’T KNOW. My point is that it’s not “bullying” to ask you to contribute financially to the upkeep of the organization that allows you to make a whole lot of money. It’s not self-righteous to say that we have an obligation to provide evidence-backed support to those other club members who need it.

Penn, you’re not a bully but you’re also not the weird kid. You’re that jerkoff who watches the weird kid get the shit beaten out of him even though you could help. I know, I know, you gave your lunch money to that kid yesterday after he was already black and blue and stuffed in a locker, but at the end of the day you refuse to support a system that will help that kid and all the others like him out of trouble because it might take you a few days longer to buy a backup floating table for the talent show.

Considering, however, that the entire theme of this essay is “if I don’t know the answer no one should even try to know,” you are pretty fucking self-righteous.

You may want to know…

June 27, 2011 in PSA | by | 2 comments

Someone pointed out to me that I haven’t written anything in “a season,” so I thought I should explain why and then make myself be better at writing again. So, here is the first reason: I got a new job. Yeah! Remember when I was all mopey rain cloud all the time because I was poor and unproductive? Well now I’m just poor! Take that upcoming thirties! I’m a Field Representative (don’t worry, I don’t know what it means either) for an elected person and while I get paid like an intern, I have state health insurance. STATE HEALTH INSURANCE. Sometimes I go to the doctor just for fun— you know, to see how he’s doing. To ask him about moles and shit. Oh that’s just a smushed chocolate chip smudge? Put it on my tab!

Reason number two: I’m a super bad-ass runner now. That’s actually a lie, since I’m still the same shitty, slow runner I’ve always been, but now I can run shittily and slow for miles and miles consistently. I’m sort of training to do a half marathon so sometimes I run up to 8 miles at a time like some kind of a super-human mutant. (And yes, I realize a half marathon is much more than 8 miles, but I’m working up to it, lay off me.)

Reason number three: There’s this brand new show I’ve discovered that you’ve probably never even heard of because I’m way more hip and cool than you. It’s called Cheers. It’s about these people in a bar and they say funny things to eachother and get into situations and it’s like watching a bunch of friends whose names I know because we’re so close! Basically after all the working and running this is the only thing I have the energy to enjoy.

But not anymore, dear readers! Or, rather, probably still, but maybe I’ll try to be less lazy more often. Things? I’ve got opinions on them! And sure, I usually start posts, get super mad, write myself into exhaustion, reread it and realize it’s stupid and incoherent and then abandon it all together but! What was I saying? Anyway, this non-post about not posting is my promise to you to attempt to try to be better about making an effort to post. And if for some reason you have something you wish I’d write about you can send me a topic and I will probably write about it because guilt is the biggest motivating factor in my whole life. Really, it is.

Thanks for bearing with me, internet! I love you forever!

Starting Now

March 28, 2011 in Messenging | Tags: , , , , | by | 7 comments

Proclamation: Progressives need to stop helping people. 

Forget everything I’ve ever said about hard-working American’s who are just trying to get by.  Forget what I said about healthcare being a human right or about structural economic discrimination. Forget all those times I’ve said that great nations have an obligation to keep children off the streets or treat humans equally.  I’m done with compassion and empathy.  From now on I’m talking selfishness.  I’m talking me and you, looking out for number one.

Because the sad fact is that personal stories aren’t moving anyone anymore.  I could tell you about the 48 year-old man with whom I spoke last week, who just moved in with his parents because he can’t afford his $600 a month health insurance bill. I could tell you about the girl I worked with who had a baby at 15, the first time she had sex, because she never understood that the two things were related.  How she used to come to work with black eyes because her boyfriend beat her but she couldn’t afford to leave him. We could talk about kids who turn to gangs because it seems like the only protection available; about the people who can’t afford annual exams and don’t realized they have cancer until it’s too late; about families missing that one payment that snowballs into bankruptcy, into homelessness; about boys, like my step brother, who miss a probation meeting at 18 and end up in prison, end up addicted to and selling heroin. We could tell those stories, but at the end of the day we can all go home to our beds and our families and console ourselves that it’s not us, it’s them: those stupid sluts, those lazy poor people, those subhuman criminals who have problems that you and I would never be dumb enough to have.   Why should our tax dollars help those people?  You can’t force me to be charitable. No one is entitled to help. I don’t owe you anything.

So from now on I’m going to speak in terms that everyone can understand: cold, hard cash. Maybe we don’t owe them anything, but investing $1 in pregnancy prevention saves the state $4 in the cost of unintended pregnancies, which costs $7 billion in the U.S. annually.

When your neighbor is foreclosed on, it costs your local government an average of $20,000 per home.

85%, or around $35 billion, of uncompensated health care (a result of the uninsured ending up in emergencies rooms) is paid for by you the taxpayer, and the rest are costs covered by the hospitals themselves, which is in turn passed on to you the patient or to your insurer, which is again, passed on to you the insured.

Head Start programs can generate up to $9 to $17 for every $1 invested, in increased earnings, employment, family stability, decreased welfare dependency, crime costs, grade repetition, and special education. Teaching a kid to read is a hell of a lot cheaper than the cost of incarcerating that kid ten years later.

Drug treatment programs are ten times more cost-effective than the War on Drugs, which has not only not worked and created a system that blatantly discriminates against the black community, it has also empowered organized crime and made drugs cheaper and more easily available.

Investing in people is cheaper and more effective than cleaning up the mess that’s left behind when we let them fail. A rising tide lifts all boats.

It’s not about helping poor or disadvantaged people, it’s about helping yourself. Because when the bottom income bracket of our country falls out, they’re taking you with them.  Forget morality, forget compassion and charity, it’s fiscally responsible to invest in those people. It’s an investment in a stronger America, and a stronger America is good for you.

Dear Republicans,

February 20, 2011 in Abortion | Tags: , , | by | Leave a comment

Thank you.

No, really, I mean it. Oh, you didn’t think you’d find any gratitude from me?  I can see why. I can’t say I like you, or that I don’t think you’re pure evil. I mean you do support everything greedy, and shortsighted, and destructive in the world while simultaneously being against nearly everything good.  Sure, you prefer cutting off food and education and safety programs for poor children so you can give millionaires a tax break.  Sure, you claim to be moral while espousing that the poor and unfortunate should just die or go bankrupt  so you don’t have to contribute portions of a cent to their healthcare.  Yes, you’ve been mercilessly choking the life out of the middle class since Reagan.  But I’m going to let that all go for a minute to pay credit where credit is due.

Why?  Let me explain. You’ve been engaged in a cold war against women for years.  You’ve been banning rare, health and life saving procedures; putting up road blocks left and right to abortions; withholding funding for them; and fighting anything that might make our lives easier.  It’s been terrible, but subtle.  They’ve been attacks on the under represented: the poor, the young, the old; little attacks that chip but don’t break a system that women rely on.  It’s allowed a whole lot of people to go on believing that they are safe from you.  It allows people to ask activists like myself, why do you care so much… abortion is still legal.  Quietly, you’ve been taking advantage of people too burdened with unemployment or rising costs of living to notice all the damage you’re doing.

But in January you opened fire.  Redefine rape?  Legalizing abortion-doctor-murder? Let women die in hospitals? De-funding Planned Parenthood, the organization low and middle-income women across the nation rely on for cancer screenings and birth control?!  I would be scared if I thought there was any chance in hell that it would pass the Senate, or Obama’s veto, but I don’t think it can.  Because it’s crazy. Stupid crazy.  It’s grandstanding and it’s wasting our time and money.

And I say bring it on.  Wear your crazy on your sleeve.  Give women like Jackie Speier a chance to talk about her necessary “partial birth abortion.”  Take those seats you won because of jobs and use them to make yourselves look like the monsters you are.  What’s next? What wacky woman-hating legislation can you conjure up? Mandatory fetus naming laws?  Scarlet letters? Public stonings? Public broadcasts of miscarriages?

You don’t scare me.  But I think, and I hope, that women are about to scare you. They aren’t going to sit there and get shit on anymore.  Our lives and our health are just as important as your own.

So thank you.  Thank you for finally being honest about your true feelings.  Thank you for finally taking off this mask of “concern.” Thank you for finally opening fire.  I can’t wait to see the retaliation.

P.S. Do something! Donate. Sign. Call.

PSA: Google Does Not Make You a Scientist

December 20, 2010 in PSA, Tips For a Better Life | Tags: , , , , , | by | 8 comments

During one of those uncomfortable getting-to-know-you conversations with a new acquaintance, I was recently told that, though she is a biology major, said acquaintance doesn’t believe in evolution.  She’s done a lot of research on google and it just doesn’t add up.

As someone who once had to take a full anti-evolution course and occasionally listens to Intelligent Design sermons for fun, I immediately wanted to school her on how flimsy all of the arguments I already know she believes are.  Of course, I then reminded myself that this person was not convinced by an entire semester of college biology and refrained.  Truthfully, I’m less bothered by the fact that she doesn’t understand the theory (science is hard!) and more annoyed that an otherwise reasonable person is basically ascribing to the most ridiculous conspiracy theory I’ve ever heard.

99.9% of the Scientific community thinks evolution does, actually, add up.   Now when I say “scientist,” resist the urge to imagine a hunchback in a laboratory maniacally rubbing his human-fat soaked hands and think instead of a person who has devoted their entire life to studying and learning about science.  That is their whole job.  And it’s not a few guys in a basement scouring blogs, it’s somewhere around 500,000 professional science people.   Unlike the googler, their livelihood depends on this stuff.  When they come up with theories they publish them and then other scientists review them. Those other scientists either agree or publish their own theories about why scientist #1 is such an idiot he can’t tell his protons from his neutrons.  It’s self-correcting in that way; it’s competitive. The more they publish studies that the scientific community can replicate, the more grants and awards and job offers and press they get.  When you can definitively disprove a long-standing, well accepted theory, you get even more money and fame!  That’s why you know who Galileo, and Newton, and Einstein are!  It’s capitalism!  You people love that!

So let’s review, Scientist: years  and years of study, doctorates and experiments, peer reviewing community, figure out how things like this work for a living, rewarded with money and fame for proving/disproving stuff; you: google.  Got it?

If a scientist could disprove the most widely accepted modern scientific theory around (evolution) he/she would win the Nobel Prize, money, and his or her name would be burned into every history book ever.  This scientist wouldn’t even have to disprove Evolution!  If they could disprove the ancient age of the earth to say, something crazy like 6,000 years, they would demolish the majority of current science.  There is every reason in the world for scientists to do this, and yet, they don’t.  Is it because they hate fame and money?  Is it because every scientist ever has a vendetta against God?  Is it because they DON’T HAVE GOOGLE?  No, it is because like gravity, the theory of evolution is a fact.

If you believe that the earth is 6,000 years old or that the first woman came from a rib or that there is some kind of difference between “micro” and “macro” evolution (hint: there isn’t), you aren’t just wrong.  You believe in a massive, worldwide conspiracy.  You believe that nearly every scientist in every branch of science; every scientific foundation and research organization; every journal; and every accredited college or University in the WHOLE WORLD is participating in some kind of coordinated, malicious cover-up to hide the truth.  It makes 9/11 Truthers and Moon-Landing conspiracy types look downright brilliant.  Scully-esque.  Pillars of reason and logic.

So whatever, keep on believing you can out-google science, just do me a solid: start wearing tinfoil hats or carry around your dead pet bird so at least I know before we start making dinner plans that I should be prepared for a dinosaur-train to crazy town.

Warning: Strong Language Ahead

December 8, 2010 in Posts That Embarrass My Parents, Rape Culture | Tags: , , , , | by | 5 comments

Here is some bullshit I hear way too much (click image for a larger view):

Isn’t it interesting how this makes my eyes bleed rage-ohol.

Lady—Fuck you.  It’s not my fucking job not to be raped.  It’s not my job not to be robbed or murdered or kidnapped and it’s NOT MY FUCKING JOB NOT TO BE RAPED.  Even if I wear tank tops, even if I wear mini skirts, even if I tattoo “I LOVE BONING” on my forehead.  And anyone who prefaces this kind of status with “It’s interesting…” needs to be punched.  In their brain.

Dude—Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck you.  The problem is YOU.  The problem is MEN who think rape comes from slutty ladies and not RAPISTS.

This status had 23 responses and 18 of them were along the lines of “Yeah, what’s with all these slutty women making men rape them lolzomgshaha1!11”

Men rape women because they feel entitled to our bodies.  Not because of what we wear, or how much we drink, or whether or not we’ve “led them on.”  Men all across America see scantily clad women everyday and don’t rape them.  Men go on dates and pay for dinners and make out with ladies and don’t rape them when they decline sex.  Men even have sex, naked sex, with full-on naked women and then SOMEHOW manage to not rape those same slutty-sluts (or other women!) when they don’t want to have sex.

This is clearly a confusing issue so in order to help clear it up, here are some questions to ask yourself the next time you’re about to blame someone for rape:

Question 1: Did this person rape someone?

If “yes,” then this person can and should be blamed for rape.

Question 2: Was this person raped?

If “yes,” then this person should not be blamed for rape, on account of never having raped anyone.

Question 3: Was this person asking for it?

Trick question! If someone asks you to rape them, that is a “rape fetish,” and is not actually rape since they have given their consent! No blame needed!

Question 4: But was this person asking for it?

Trick question again! Either they consented to the sexual acts performed or they didn’t! Which is it, asshole-devil’s-advocate?!  Ugh, no one likes you.

Question 5: Is this person advocated blaming women who get raped for being raped?

Mixed answer!  No, they should not be blamed for raping someone (unless they have), but yes, they should be blamed for helping to further enshrine a culture, rape-culture that is, which teaches men that, yes, our bodies are a commodity they are entitled to, and that our bodily autonomy and safety is a privilege we can lose by stepping outside of what is socially acceptable in our dress, speech, sexuality, or behavior.  These fucking people!

More clear now?  Great! Now get out there, wear whatever the fuck you want, and start blaming the right rapists!  And for shit’s sake, unfriend that fuckwit.

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